It's been 27 years. Some of the memories are hazy. Some are as as sharp as they were that day: August 2, 1979.

I hadn't been driving five minutes when I came up over a rise in the road and there it was. A hulk of metal and plastic and rubber -- a Cessna Citation -- twisted, flattened and still smoldering, smack in the middle of the road.

A thousand feet to the north, up over another rise and out of view, was runway 19 at the Canton Regional Airport. It's the runway where Thurman Munson had been practicing touch-and-goes, when his Cessna Citation fell out of the sky and burst into flames.

I got out of the car as quietly as I could. Would have whispered, if there had been anyone around. But there wasn't. No security, no investigators, no celebrity ghouls, just me and one other soul. Thurman Munson's.

I found myself circling the wreckage, as you would a casket, though Munson's body already had been pulled from the plane.

It was the smell that struck me. I told myself I would never forget it. Maybe it was a combination of the rubber and plastic and paint, still cooking that gave the scene its pungent scent.

Munson and I had an unusual arrangement. I covered the Yankees then for Newsday. I backed up the regular beat guy, which meant covering 30 or 40 games a year.

Newsday had later deadlines than any of the other four newspapers that regularly followed the Yankees. That allowed me to wait for Munson to get out of the trainers' room, which sometimes meant waiting till the clubhouse was nearly empty. Then Munson would arrive at his locker and open the conversation as he always did.

"I don't talk to reporters."

"Yes, well, you don't. But you do," I'd say. And, as gruffly as he could, he'd snap back with something about he'd better never see his name in print next to a quote.

I'd remind him that I'd never attributed anything to him, yet. And he'd grumble, and then we would start the dance, me asking questions, him grumbling answers.

Munson, by the '79 season, had managed to elude a starring role in the daily soap opera that was the New York Yankees. It was his team. He was the captain, the first the Yankees had named since Lou Gehrig. So, he hadn't taken it well when Reggie Jackson had proclaimed himself, not Munson, to be "the straw that stirs the drink."

His team or not, Munson quickly realized he'd be better off keeping his mouth shut - at least, publicly - and so he was careful even when he knew he wouldn't be directly quoted.

When I was assigned to write a profile of Munson for Sport magazine, he again refused to be interviewed directly. So I did the whole story through his wife, Diane, who never showed the slightest hesitation to remind her husband that he was the one who'd chosen to put a cork in it.

It was during these turbulent days of Munson vs. Jackson vs. Craig Nettles vs. George Steinbrenner vs. Billy Martin that Munson decided to trade in his small, propeller plane for the Citation, a business jet.

Diane and the kids always stayed home, in Canton, until school was out in the spring. If the Yankees had a day off in New York, Munson would fly to Ohio and spend the day at home. The jet, he said, would cut his flight time.

Indirectly, that decision killed him, as it has others.

Propeller planes are piston driven, just like your car. If you're passing on a two-land road and suddenly realize you're going to crash if you don't get some speed - fast - you floor it. And instantly, you've got full power.

But jet engines are different. If you're low and slow -- an often-deadly combination -- the engines have to "spool up" before the pilot has any power. That takes seven seconds. Count them: one, two, three, four, five, six...

Munson must have been counting them in the cockpit. And, never got to seven.

I stood beside the wreckage that day in August, trying to take it all in. The sound of the metal, ticking as it cooled. The whisper of the breeze in the tall grasses on the rise. The smell.

Wednesday, just looking at pictures of Corey Lidle's plane in flames, I could almost remember the smell.

From 2,000 miles away.