A pitcher for the Yankees was the pilot of a small, fixed-wing plane that crashed into an apartment building on the East Side yesterday, killing him and a passenger.

The accidental crash also struck at a wound in the city’s psyche that was just beginning to scar five years after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

The training aircraft piloted by Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, 34, departed from Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, circled around the Statue of Liberty, and was traveling up the East River when it disappeared from the Federal Aviation Administration’s radar at about 59th Street at a few minutes after 2:30 p.m.

A resident of 1 East River Place, Marvell Sott, 33, was in his living room on the 41st floor when he heard a buzzing sound that grew louder and nearer before culminating in an explosion, he said.

“I just turned around and right as I heard the crash I saw a huge fireball emanating from the building across,” he said. Black smoke billowed out.

“Half of it went into the building, and the rest fell into the street,” a surgical coordinator at her office across the street from the building, Nicole Carambot, said. “People were scattering around as the debris came down. It was the loudest bang I ever heard.”

Several apartments clustered together on the 40th and 41st floors of the Belaire building at 524 E. 72nd St. erupted into flames, but officials said no one inside the building was killed by the crash. The upscale building, which also contains a 22-floor hospital, was completely evacuated until late evening.

A former owner of one of the apartments, Ruth Gutman, said that in 2004 she sold the one-bedroom apartment hit by the plane to a woman whom she said planned to use it for housing guests. The current owner couldn’t be reached last night.

A construction worker, Luis Gonzalez, was working a few floors below the 40th floor inside the Belaire when the plane struck.

“I looked at the window and I saw the airplane coming toward us,” he said. “I couldn’t tell if he tried to hit or tried to avoid us.”

The first 911 call about the crash came at 2:42 p.m., less than 13 minutes after the plane took off, police said.

Two bodies were found on the street, including Lidle’s, whose passport was among the fiery wreckage. Lidle was in the plane with a flight instructor, whom officials believed was the second victim. Lidle, whom Mayor Bloomberg didn’t identify during his press conference, had about 75 hours of flight experience.

Fifteen firefighters, one police officer, and five civilians were taken to New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center for injuries. Nurses walking out of the hospital last night said one person had been badly burned, and another had a head wound.

Lidle’s wife, Melanie, and son, Christopher, survive him. Members of the Yankees yesterday offered their condolences to the family.

A large section of the East Side was closed to pedestrian and automobile traffic, while dozens of police, fire, and other city and federal trucks and cars surrounded the building. Police tape snaked across more than a dozen intersections and street corners. Mr. Bloomberg called the response by the city agencies “massive and quick and coordinated.” The auction house Sotheby’s closed down its building on York Avenue.

Six investigators from the National Transportation Security Board were looking into what caused the plane to suddenly veer away from the East River corridor and crash into the building, a spokeswoman, Deborah Hersman, said. Planes and helicopters are allowed to fly at heights above 100 feet over the East River without contact from a radio tower, though this space is more commonly used by helicopters that take off from heliports along the edges of Manhattan. The plane was tracked by radar yesterday, but not directed by Federal Aviation Administration operators, officials said.

The FAA issued a temporary flight restriction on general aviation aircraft yesterday, requiring all planes flying under 1,500 feet to be under the control of air traffic control, Governor Pataki said.

He said the crash highlighted the need to have greater control of the airspace around the city, and asked that the flight restrictions stay in place until a comprehensive review of all the rules is finished.

“Today’s even is yet another reminder of our need to stay vigilant in our efforts to keep New Yorkers safe from terrorist attacks,” he said.

A pilot who teaches at the Flight School at Palm Springs in California, Andy Dutsi, said he believed Lidle stalled the plane after hitting a steep angle. Experienced pilots can recover from this, but it’s a difficult maneuver for relatively new pilots, he said.

Residents of the area said that after the sharp sound of an explosion, people began running away from the building. Smoke drifted throughout the street, and many looking up at the burning hole initially feared that they were witnessing another terrorist attack. Officials said soon after the crash that after reviewing data about the pilot and plane they were certain no terrorist activity was involved.

An assistant to a doctor on 72nd Street, Emily Dylarinos, said that dozens of people were running westward past her ground floor window. A few stopped to turn around and take pictures on their camera phones, she said.

“When I went outside, I started shaking,” she said. “I thought, ‘It can’t be happening again.'”

Much of the airplane was incinerated in the crash, one of the first firefighters on the scene, Lieutenant Edward Ryan of Engine 44, said. When his team first arrived at the building, the burning debris in front of the Belaire looked like a car fire, he said.

He and the other responding firefighters took the elevator to the 30th floor, and then walked up the stairs to the 40th floor, where they knocked out a fire in apartment 40F. He recognized parts of the aircraft inside, including fragments of the landing gear, he said.

“There was a lot of heat, a lot of smoke,” Mr. Ryan said.

One East Sider, Jeanne Johnson, threw together an emergency suitcase and made a run for it. She lives at 515 River Terrace, a block from the Belaire.

“I don’t think I want to spend the night here,” she said.