The day that the New York Mets announced that they had a pitcher who could throw a 168 mph fastball: “The Curious Case of Sidd Finch”

… sounded almost too good to be true

The highest number that the JUGS had ever turned for a baseball was 103 mph, which it did, curiously, twice on one day, July 11, at the 1978 All-Star game when both Goose Gossage and Nolan Ryan threw the ball at that speed. On March 17, the gun was handled by [Mel] Stottlemyre. He heard the pop of the ball in Reynolds's mitt and the little squeak of pain from the catcher. Then the astonishing figure 168 appeared on the glass plate. Stottlemyre remembers whistling in amazement, and then he heard Reynolds say, "Don't tell me, Mel, I don't want to know...."

Sports Illustrated, April 1, 1985

Sometimes, stories sound too good to be true. When the New York Mets fans read in Sports Illustrated that they had this fantastic pitching prospect, a guy who was clocked at throwing a fastball at a speed of 168 miles per hour. Since the record at that time on the JUGS machine was 104 mph, having a pitcher like this could remake the major leagues. 

Sports Illustrated reported that the Mets had a pitcher named Hayden Siddhartha “Sidd” Finch who was a tremendous find. He wore just one shoe and was an expert at playing the French Horn. One of the Mets players, John Christensen, said this about the prospect,

I never dreamed a baseball could be thrown that fast. The wrist must have a lot to do with it, and all that leverage. You can hardly see the blur of it as it goes by. As for hitting the thing, frankly, I just don't think it's humanly possible. You could send a blind man up there, and maybe he'd do better hitting at the sound of the thing.

Sports Illustrated, April 1, 1985

The Mets fans were thrilled when they read the story. Some of the newspaper reporters who covered the Mets were upset with the team for not sharing it with all the papers. This was a scoop of monumental proportions, and it shook the baseball world. How could the other teams deal with a pitcher who could fire that past and had great control?

The story said that the Mets had assigned a locker to Finch right between two of their great stars, Darryl Strawberry and George Foster. 

The only problem with the story, I realized when I first read it, was its author: George Plimpton.

The curious life of George Plimpton

When he passed away in 2003, the New York Times obituary referred to George Plimpton as a “New York aristocrat and literary journalist,” hardly the kind of person who would be writing a piece for Sports Illustrated. The obit went further,

Mr. Plimpton, a lanky, urbane man possessed of boundless energy and perpetual bonhomie, became, in 1953, the first and only editor of The Paris Review. A ubiquitous presence at book parties and other gala social events, he was tireless in his commitment to the serious, contemporary fiction the magazine publishes.

Easily identifiable in later years by his thatch of silver hair and always by his cheery, lockjaw delivery, Mr. Plimpton was a familiar figure ranging above other guests at the restaurants, saloons and weekend destinations where blue-blood New York overlapped with the New York of the famous and the creative.

Richard Severo, Sept. 26, 2003

However, Plimpton had another side of him that was very attractive — and lucrative for him. He attempted to live vicariously through the lives of very successful people, a form of journalism that he enjoyed significantly, the Times explained,

As a "participatory journalist," Mr. Plimpton believed that it was not enough for writers of nonfiction to simply observe; they needed to immerse themselves in whatever they were covering to understand fully what was involved. For example, he believed that football huddles and conversations on the bench constituted a "secret world, and if you're a voyeur, you want to be down there, getting it firsthand."

Richard Severo

As a result, he boxed with former champion Archie Moore, pitched an exhibition against major league baseball player, played with the New York Philharmonic, and he even was with Sen. Robert F. Kennedy when he was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in 1968. 

Well-educated and wealthy

Plimpton’s life and education do not lend themselves to the pages of a sports magazine. 

According to the Times,

George Ames Plimpton was born in New York on March 18, 1927, the son of Francis T. Plimpton, a successful corporate lawyer who became the American ambassador to the United Nations. His mother was the former Pauline Ames. His grandfather, George A. Plimpton, had been a publisher. The family traced its roots in this country to the Mayflower.

He was educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Harvard and Cambridge. At Harvard, where he studied literature, his education was interrupted in 1945, near the end of World War II. He spent two years in the Army, then returned and received his bachelor's degree in 1950, although he always regarded himself as a member of the class of 1948. He earned a second baccalaureate degree at Cambridge, where also earned a master's in English in 1952.

Mr. Plimpton's career included teaching at Barnard College from 1956 to 1958, editing and writing at Horizon magazine from 1959 to 1961, and at Harper's magazine, where he worked from 1972 to 1981. He also contributed material to Food and Wine magazine in the late 1970's. In the late 1960's, he was seen frequently as a host or guest on several television shows, and still later, he made some commercials for DeBeers diamonds.

Richard Severo

The Story

That leads us to the story on April 1, 1985, in SI.

The managing editor of Sports Illustrated had noticed early in 1985 that the magazine would publish on April Fool’s Day. He asked Plimpton to write an article for it about jokes on that infamous day in sports, but the author could not find many.

That led Mark Mulvoy to give permission to Plimpton to write a hoax in the magazine on that day. Enter Sidd Finch.

The story was very creative, and Plimpton was able to secure the aid of the Mets in creating the hoax. They enlisted an art teacher from Illinois to be photographed, generally from the back and the side, as Finch. He was a guy who wore a boot and threw with a bare foot. He was a person who had an interesting background, one that was simply a concoction out of Plimpton’s creative mind,

The Met front office is reluctant to talk about Finch. The fact is, they know very little about him. He has had no baseball career. Most of his life has been spent abroad, except for a short period at Harvard University.

Peterson said Finch kept very little in his Harvard room, most notably a French horn.

The registrar's office at Harvard will release no information about Finch except that in the spring of 1976 he withdrew from the college in midterm. The alumni records in Harvard's Holyoke Center indicate slightly more. 

Finch spent his early childhood in an orphanage in Leicester, England and was adopted by a foster parent, the eminent archaeologist Francis Whyte-Finch, who was killed in an airplane crash while on an expedition in the Dhaulagiri mountain area of Nepal. At the time of the tragedy, Finch was in his last year at the Stowe School in Buckingham, England, from which he had been accepted into Harvard. Apparently, though, the boy decided to spend a year in the general area of the plane crash in the Himalayas (the plane was never actually found) before he returned to the West and entered Harvard in 1975, dropping for unknown reasons the "Whyte" from his name.

“The Curious Case of Sidd Finch,” Sports Illustrated

All a hoax

SI put forth a story a week later that Finch had decided to “retire” from baseball before admitting the next week that it was a hoax. Plimpton later wrote a novel about Sidd Finch that continued his legacy. 

However, many fans still believed that Plimpton had written, hoping that they would be able to see Finch on the Mets’ roster that year,

According to Jay Horwitz, the Mets' public-relations man, Finch smiled at the offer of the fair shake and nodded his head politely—perhaps because it was the only nonmaterial offer made. It did not encroach on Finch's ideas about the renunciation of worldly goods. It was an ingenious, if perhaps unintentional, move on the manager's part.

Nelson Doubleday is especially hopeful about Finch's ultimate decision. "I think we'll bring him around," he said a few days ago. "After all, the guy's not a nut, he's a Harvard man."

In the meantime, the Mets can only wait. Finch periodically turns up at the enclosure. Reynolds is summoned. There are no drills. Sometimes Finch throws for five minutes, instantly at top speed, often for half an hour. Then he leaves. Security around the enclosure has been tight. Since Finch has not signed with the Mets, he is technically a free agent and a potential find for another club. The curious, even Met players, are politely shooed away from the Payson Field enclosure. So far Finch's only association with Met players (other than Reynolds) has been the brief confrontation with Christensen, Cochrane and Dykstra when the front office nervously decided to test his control with a batter standing in the box. If he decides to play baseball, he will leave his private world of the canvas enclosure and join manager Johnson and the rest of the squad. For the first time Gary Carter, the Mets' regular catcher, will face the smoke of the Finch pitch, and the other pitchers will stand around and gawk. The press will have a field day ("How do you spell Siddhartha? How do you grip the ball? How do you keep your balance on the mound?"). The Mets will try to protect him from the glare and help him through the most traumatic of culture shocks, praying that in the process he will not revert and one day disappear.

Actually, the presence of Hayden (Sidd) Finch in the Mets' training camp raises a number of interesting questions. Suppose the Mets (and Finch himself) can assuage and resolve his mental reservations about playing baseball; suppose he is signed to a contract (one wonders what an ascetic whose major possessions are a bowl, a small rug, a long stick and a French horn might demand); and suppose he comes to New York's Shea Stadium to open the season against the St. Louis Cardinals on April 9. It does not matter that he has never taken a fielding drill with his teammates. Presumably he will mow down the opposition in a perfect game. Perhaps Willie McGee will get a foul tip. Suppose Johnson discovers that the extraordinary symbiotic relationship of mind and matter is indefatigable—that Finch can pitch day after day at this blinding, unhittable speed. What will happen to Dwight Gooden? Will Carter and the backup catchers last the season? What will it do to major league baseball as it is known today?

Plimpton, Sports Illustrated

A great fictional character still lives on. People still celebrate Sidd Finch day and still remember what Plimpton created. 

I knew when I started reading this that it was fake, but it was still interesting. If Plimpton had said that he could throw at about 130 mph’s, then maybe it would have been more credible. 

However, it was still an interesting read. An aristocrat who concocted an elaborate scheme that he turned into a successful novel. 

That was George Plimpton — and Sidd Finch. 

“The Curious Case of Sidd Finch”

https://www.si.com/mlb/2014/10/15/curious-case-sidd-finch