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SCHENECTADY -- Donald Crandall, who had a Yankees logo tattooed on his head and whose sharp wit and easy laugh masked years of chronic pain from a rare autoimmune disease, died Friday in Chicago.

     
He had taken a road trip with relatives and friends to see his beloved Bronx Bombers play a Saturday afternoon game against the White Sox.

The 46-year-old former lieutenant in the Schenectady County Sheriff's Department was stricken in his room at a Comfort Inn & Suites in downtown Chicago shortly after arriving by train. He had become ill and laid down to rest. About 15 minutes later, his friends found Crandall in distress. Paramedics could not revive him.

Preliminary results from an autopsy were inconclusive, but he had been diagnosed in 2003 with Wegener's granulomatosis, also known as vasculitis, which causes the walls of blood vessels to become inflamed, thus limiting blood flow and damaging internal organs and tissue.