March 29, 1985: The Curious Case of Sidd Finch

March 29, 1985: A new issue of Sports Illustrated hits the newsstands. The cover is about the NCAA Final Four, which featured Louisiana State of the Southeastern Conference, and 3 teams from the Big East Conference: Georgetown, St. John's, and Villanova. Three days later, Villanova would beat Georgetown in the Final, one of the all-time greatest sports upsets.

But an even more improbable occurrence was in that issue of SI. George Plimpton, who had written so well about so many subjects, especially sports, wrote an article about a pitcher whose scouting report was shown in a photograph, and concluded with the words: "Could be the phenom of all time. Very hard to figure."

The article was titled "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch." The teaser sentence for the article said, "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."

The player in question was born Hayden Siddhartha Finch -- "Siddhartha" in honor of Siddhartha Gautama, the ancient Indian philosopher known as Buddha -- in England. He grew up in an orphanage there, attended Harvard University, and went to Tibet to, essentially, live up to his name. He had learned what he called "yogic mastery of mind-body," and said, "I have mastered the art of the pitch."

He showed up at the Spring Training camp of the New York Mets, then in St. Petersburg, Florida. He demonstrated his pitching, oddly dressed. Or, rather, oddly shod: His left foot, he kept bare; on his right foot, he wore a hiking boot, for balance, he said. And he wore his cap backwards, this being before it became a part of hip-hop style.

And he threw a ball faster than anyone had ever seen before. He was brought into Mets camp. Not wanting to risk All-Star catcher Gary Carter in case the experiment went haywire, pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, a former All-Star pitcher for the New York Yankees, had backup catcher Ronn Reynolds catch him. A radar gun was set up to see just how fast Finch could throw. Reynolds yelped in pain on the very first pitch, his catcher's mitt offering little protection. He said, "Don't tell me, Mel. I don't want to know."

Mets brass wanted to know. The radar gun read 168. Sidd Finch had thrown a baseball at one hundred and sixty-eight miles per hour. At the time, the record was 101. (The measurement is different now, and it is widely believed that 101 on the old scale would be 107 on the current one.)

Finch kept mainly to himself, reading philosophy, and playing the French horn. The article made no mention of family, other than an adoptive father who was dead. No mention was made of a wife or girlfriend, or even of Finch's age.

Finch was given uniform Number 21, most familiar to Met fans as being that of 1969 "Miracle" season outfielder Cleon Jones, although worn by Hall of Fame pitchers Warren Spahn and Bob Lemon, and the previous season's American League Rookie of the Year, Roger Clemens. Could Finch be the 1985 National League Rookie of the Year, succeeding his new Met teammate, Dwight Gooden?

For one brief, shining moment, Met fans had reason to believe they had a pitcher better than Gooden, better than Tom Seaver, better than any the Yankees they hated so much had ever had. They had reason to believe that, having gotten into their 1st Pennant race in 11 years the season before, Finch was going to help them go all the way in 1985.

The article began with the words, "The secret cannot be kept much longer. Questions are being asked, and sooner rather than later the New York Mets management will have to produce a statement."  

As it turned out, the statement the team issued, which SI covered in its next issue, was that Finch had lost his control due to the media pressure, and thus his great speed became a liability -- not just to the counting of balls and strikes, but to the lives of anyone his pitches might hit. The team said he was quitting baseball so he didn't hurt anyone.

It may have been that Major League Baseball uniform requirements meant that he had to abandon his choice (and his non-choice) of footwear, and wear standard baseball socks and cleats, and that this threw him off, rendering his great speed a danger to all and sundry. Finch said he had to quit, and would go off to play his horn.

The date on the cover for the original story was April 1, 1985. Some of us suspected that it was too good to be true, and considered the date to be a hint that some flim-flammery was going on. Some people figured out that the first letter of each word of the teaser sentence spelled out, "HAPPY APRIL FOOLS DAY -- AH, FIB."

It would one more issue before SI fessed up. The man playing Finch was Joe Berton, a junior high school art teacher in the suburbs of Chicago -- and a fan of the Chicago Cubs, who had beaten the Mets out for the NL Eastern Division title the year before. He was a friend of SI photographer Lane Stewart, who recruited him for the article.

In 1987, Plimpton expanded the article into a novel, giving Finch a girlfriend who talks him into coming back. In his 1st game, he throws 81 pitches, all strikes, for 27 outs and a perfect game. But in his 2nd game, his control starts to give, and, concerned for the safety of all, he has to give it up once again.

George Plimpton

Plimpton died in 2003. In 2015, appropriately enough on the 30th Anniversary of the hoax, ESPN aired a 30 for 30 documentary on Finch, as if the story were real. (They've also done this for the movies Rocky IV and the 1994 version of Angels in the Outfield.) That same year, the Brooklyn Cyclones, a Mets farm team, held a Sidd Finch Bobblehead Doll Night, and invited Berton, who signed autographs, under both his real name and his nom de base.

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March 29, 1985 was a Friday. As I said, baseball was in Spring Training. The NFL was in its off-season. But there was a game that night in the USFL: The Tampa Bay Bandits beat the Memphis Showboats, 28-20 at the Liberty Bowl in Memphis.

There were 6 games played in the NBA:

* The New Jersey Nets lost to the Washington Bullets, 122-98 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland.

* The Boston Celtics beat the Philadelphia 76ers, 112-108 at the Boston Garden.

* The Houston Rockets beat the Golden State Warriors, 121-116 at The Summit in Houston. (The arena has since been converted into the Central Campus of the Lakewood Church, Dr. Joel Osteen's "megachurch.")

* The Utah Jazz beat the San Antonio Spurs, 114-109 at the Salt Palace in Salt Lake City. Despite the Spurs' defeat, Mike Mitchell scored 38 points for him, leading all NBA scorers on the night.

* The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Dallas Mavericks, 120-115 at The Forum outside Los Angeles in Inglewood, California.

* And the Portland Trail Blazers beat their arch-rivals, the Seattle SuperSonics, 125-99 at the Seattle Center Coliseum.

There were 3 games played in the NHL:

* The Hartford Whalers beat the Edmonton Oilers, 8-7 at the Hartford Civic Center. (It's now named the PeoplesBank Arena). Ray Ferraro scored a hat trick for the Whalers.

* The Chicago Black Hawks and the Winnipeg Jets played to a tie, 5-5 at the Winnipeg Arena.

* And the Calgary Flames beat the Los Angeles Kings, 3-0 at the Saddledome in Calgary.