For sports fans in the 1980s, there were no smartphones, no Internet sites, and no sports channels on TV. If you were lucky, your city had one radio station dedicated to sports talk. Aside from going to a ballpark, our only other sources of information were the sport section of the local newspaper (I read every word they printed) and that amazing gift that came once per week.
I refer, of course, to the magazine Sports Illustrated. In 1985, I was too young to have a subscription. But my friend’s father subscribed to it and we read the magazines when he was done with them. Except for the annual SI swimsuit issue, which I assume he kept for himself. Since my hormones hadn’t kicked in yet, bikini pictures could wait.
My friend's dad must have kept the swimsuit issues, since we didn't get them.
In the spring of 1985, my friend’s dad asked us if we’d ever heard of Sidd Finch. We hadn’t. Neither had anyone else. He showed us the cover story in the April 1 edition of Sports Illustrated. The date should have been a clue: April Fool’s Day.
In the cover story, the respected writer George Plimpton profiled a phenomenal pitching prospect who had been signed to play baseball by the New York Mets. Hayden Siddartha Finch had been orphaned and spent some formative years in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet. The young pitcher wore one shoe, a curious hiking boot, and he could throw a baseball at an astonishing 168 miles per hour (the record then was 104 mph).
The subheading of the article read: "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga —and his future in baseball." If you take the first letter from each word, it spells: "H-a-p-p-y A-p-r-i-l F-o-o-l-s D-a-y”.
The team played along. Obviously, Sidd Finch had impressed the Mets’ scouts for his potential to be a dominant major league pitcher. The magazine article showed pictures of him with other Mets players and coaches. It was time for pre-season Spring Training, so the Mets were training in St. Petersburg, Florida. The team put Sidd Finch’s name on a locker in the clubhouse. And they were inundated with phone calls and requests from media all over the country. Executives from two other teams called the commissioner's office to ask how their players could face such a pitcher.
Finch's locker at Spring Training.
Fake scouting report.
There wasn't any Twitter then. It took the weekly magazine two weeks to set the record straight. The April 8 edition of Sports Illustrated announced that Sidd Finch had retired from baseball. He was more interested in yoga (and possibly playing the French horn) and planned to return to the Tibetan monastery. In the April 15 edition of the magazine, SI finally announced that there was no Sidd Finch; the story had been a hoax. The actor who had played Sidd Finch was a high school teacher who was a friend of the magazine’s photographer.
The writer, George Plimpton, later wrote a full book about Sidd Finch. A minor league team in the Mets organization created a bobblehead doll giveaway on Sidd Finch night a few years ago with the actor/teacher signing autographs. The late George Plimpton’s son threw out the first pitch. ESPN's 30-for-30 series covered the whole saga a few years ago.
Sidd Finch is retired but will not be forgotten. And don't forget to mark your calendars for April 1; keep an eye out for any possible hoaxes!
Link to SI story: https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/10/15/curious-case-sidd-finch
Photos courtesy of Sports Illustrated, except for locker and scouting report, which are courtesy of the New York Mets. Bobblehead image is from the Brooklyn Cyclones.