As the family of Fredia Ann Veitch, 30, reeled with grief, new details emerged about Leyritz's partying with a Playboy model in the hours before the tragedy early Friday.
- NY Daily News story on former Yankee World Series Hero
The word "tragedy" has a specific meaning in literature to stand for an unfortunate occurence by those who do not mean to do harm. Shades of irony and "s/he meant well." The word more generally means some seriously bad thing that happens, including those without any good or bad guys (e.g., harm from a hurricane, even without the maladministration of the likes of Katrina).
The word still seems a bit inapt here -- Leyritz, who once "bragged"* that he hit a home run after a night on the town with the help of some of the substances the Mitchell Report targeted -- apparently drove intoxicated and killed a mother of two young children. This is not really a "tragedy," but a horrible act of stupidity. I keep on seeing PSAs on television against "buzzed" driving ... since the model suggested he was buzzed but not drunk ... maybe new ones should be made showing that picture. No, that would probably be a violation of privacy.
Still, her death provides a warning for this time of year. It also provides a window into the tabloid leaning journalism of papers like the NY Daily News. Better than the New York Post, and having some journalistic qualities (the op-ed pages have gone to the dogs of late, though), it still is sure to have some tabloid material. This includes (and this article was not an exception, which honestly is a bit tacky, though I assume they can say it has some news function to show what he was doing beforehand or something) some excuse at showing sexy pictures of some tart. OTOH, the coverage also put a human face on the victim here.
This served a useful function, and probably deserves to be done more often in a range of things in which a human face will hit home. Aiming at our emotions was always an aim for tabloids, but not without some value. Fredia Ann Veitch is not just a statistic, but a human face no longer with us.**
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* Akin to some remarks in an article about his use of HGH about Andy Pettite's piety, this is from the NY Daily News coverage that can show some bite.
** A striking tidbit from the coverage was that the husband did not at first tell a neighbor how the wife died, since in effect it did not really matter -- she was dead, the rest just details. The details matter, but this greater truth does as well.