The anguish still rises unmistakably from the pages of the deposition, which is now nearly 40 years old. In it, a witness named David Hall hesitates as he testifies, and a lawyer asks if he needs a short break. Hall declines and continues.

By the time he is done, he has provided a devastating account of the final moments in the life of Thurman Munson, the Yankees catcher who died at age 32 when the plane he was flying crashed short of the runway at Akron-Canton Airport in Ohio on Aug. 2, 1979.

Hall was in the plane when it slammed into the ground. In the deposition, he describes how in the immediate aftermath of the crash, Munson lay motionless, his head turned sideways and pressed against the instrument panel.

Munson’s neck, it turned out, had been broken by the impact of the crash. His body was paralyzed. Still, Hall testified, Munson managed to ask him and Jerry Anderson, the other passenger in the plane, if they were O.K.