Roy Halladay’s wife, Brandy, on NTSB report: ‘No one is perfect’

Brandy Halladay said the report released Wednesday by the National Transportation Safety Board about her husband Roy Halladay’s fatal 2017 plane crash was painful for her family to read, but she said it reinforced what she has stated in the past.

“No one is perfect,” Brandy Halladay said Thursday in a statement released by the Phillies.

The NTSB report said Halladay had high levels of amphetamines and other drugs in his system when he crashed his amphibious sport plane in the Gulf of Mexico on Nov. 7, 2017. The report said Halladay was doing a series of acrobatic stunts when he lost control of the plane and nosedived into the water just off the coast of Florida. Halladay, 40, died of blunt force trauma and drowning.

Halladay’s father, Harry, told the NTSB that he was concerned that his son was abusing prescription medications and that it might have played a role in the accident. Harry Halladay, who is also a pilot, said his son enrolled a couple of years earlier in an in-house detox program for an addiction to the sedative lorazepam. Halladay’s primary care physician said the former pitcher went to inpatient rehab in 2013 and from January to March 2015. At the time, Halladay had been abusing opioids and benzodiazepine, a tranquilizer, according to the report.

“Most families struggle in some capacity and ours was no exception,” Brandy Halladay said. “We respectfully ask that you not make assumptions or pass judgment. Rather, we encourage you to hug your loved ones and appreciate having them in your lives. As a family, we ask that you allow Roy to rest in peace.”

Roy Halladay ended his Hall of Fame career by pitching four seasons with the Phillies. He won a Cy Young Award, pitched a perfect game, and threw the second no-hitter in postseason history. On the mound, Halladay was near perfect. The Phillies added him to their Wall of Fame in 2018 and announced earlier this year that they will retire his No. 34 on May 29, the 10th anniversary of his perfect game.

“I think that Roy would want everyone to know that people aren’t perfect,” Brandy Halladay said last summer at her husband’s Hall of Fame induction. “We are all imperfect or flawed in one way or another. We all struggle, but with hard work, humility and dedication, imperfect people can still have perfect moments. Roy was blessed in his life and his career to have some perfect moments.”