Friday, April 01, 2005

It was 20 years ago today that Sports Illustrated foisted a classic April Fools Day hoax on an unsuspecting public, when the late George Plimpton penned "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch," a 6,000-word profile of an enigmatic pitching prospect in the Mets' farm system. Finch was an orphan from Leicester, England. He'd dropped out of Harvard to study Eastern religion in the Himalayas. And he played a sublime French horn. Most staggering of all, his fastball topped out at a jaw-dropping 168 mph.

Amazingly, most people -- including a few big league managers and at least one sports page editor -- took the bait. Apparently, they didn't think to read between the lines of Plimpton's subhed: He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent lifestyle, Sidd's deciding about yoga -- and his future in baseball.

Here's Plimpton's piece in all its goofball glory. (To think that as a eight-year-old fan of the AAA Maine Guides back in 1984, I myself could have seen Finch pitch! If he'd ever existed, that is.) And today's New York Times looks back on the shenanigans, catching up with Joe Berton, the shy high school art teacher who posed for photos as the gangly fireballer -- and still gets recognized and asked for autographs today.

It was a great joke. But, as Alan Schwarz points out, it also spoke to a deeper emotion that holds sway over those who love the game. "To those not furious at Sports Illustrated -- several readers angrily canceled their subscriptions -- Sidd Finch came to embody a piece of baseball's eternal dreaminess, its belief that someday, someone might come out of nowhere with a pitching arm touched by the heavens."

4/1/2005 12:56:00 PM by Mike Miliard | Comments [0] |