Sidd Finch, what can I say… you’ve never heard of him, have you? What if I told you that the sports world stopped in its tracks in April 1985, and what if I told you it was because of The Mighty Sidd Finch. Buckle up, this is one of my favorite stories.
Sidd Finch, Harvard dropout, wannabe Tibetan Monk, and master of the French Horn, got a 14-page layout in the April 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated. In 1985, Sports Illustrated was as good as it got. Remember, this was a time of no internet. Barely anyone had a PC, they were rare and costly. News traveled slowly if it traveled at all. And no one, I mean no one, got a 14-page layout in Sports Illustrated. Except, of course, for Sidd Finch.
Finch wore a work boot on his right foot and nothing on the left, not even a sock. He didn’t need to warm up to do his job, all he needed was a catcher brave enough to get behind the plate. Sidd Finch, the mysterious orphan with an unbelievable back story, threw a baseball 168 mph. That is not a typo. Tall and lanky, Finch used the discipline he acquired in his time in Tibet to master his mind and body. He threw a baseball faster than scientists thought humanly possible, a lot faster.
When the issue featuring Finch was published, most people (nearly all) were startled and confused. How was it possible that the New York Mets could keep Finch under wraps. No one in the baseball community had ever heard of him. No one, except for the Mets, had any scouting reports on him. It was as if he materialized out of thin air.
At least two major league general managers (nameless to this day) called Peter Ueberroth, the baseball commissioner, to inquire about Finch. How is this possible? What is going on? Did you know about this? How did the Mets get this guy? Is all this above board?
Newspaper editors were angry at the reporters they had covering the Mets. They wanted to know how Sports Illustrated got this scoop. How was it possible that reporters covering the team were not aware of this pitching phenom? After all, those reporters were with the team every day, it was their job to report on stories like this. How could they have dropped the ball? How is it that George Plimpton from Sports Illustrated waltzes in and gets a big story that was right under your noses the entire time? Unbelievable.
Well, the whole thing was unbelievable. The Sidd Finch Saga is the greatest April Fools Day joke in the history of April or the history of jokes. Joe Berton, shown below signing a tiny French Horn in 2015, was enlisted to be Sidd Finch. The New York Mets were in on the gag, allowing a photographer to take pictures of Finch in a Mets uniform interacting with his “teammates.”
One day, I guess it was in the late 1980s or early 1990s, I was walking along the streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, when a car passed me. Believe me, I got a chuckle out of the bumper sticker prominently displayed near the license plate…”SIDD FINCH LIVES!” That is a great bumper sticker if you are in on the joke. In early April, 1985, people were not in on the joke and they lost their minds. In the April 8, 1985, issue of Sports Illustrated it was announced that Sidd Finch retired. In the next issue, the hoax was revealed. I remember when the story broke, it was great fun listening to people speculate on how many championships the Mets were going to win with their Secret Weapon, The Mighty Sidd Finch. As for me, I never trust anything published on April 1st.
