Forty years ago this week, Sports Illustrated published a story about a New York Mets prospect that was too good to be true.
Literally.
Standing 6-foot-4 and weighing 170 pounds, a right-handed pitcher named Hayden "Siddhartha" Finch became one of the tallest tales in sports history.
Raised as an orphan in England, Finch studied a year at Harvard, before dropping out and heading to Tibet, where he hoped to be a monk. Despite being 28 years old, Finch was discovered in Maine by the Mets' Triple-A manager.
What did he discover? Finch's 168-mph fastball, of course.
Within 24 hours of the story's publication, many fans were whipped into a frenzy. Although some knew right away it was an April Fool's joke, the magazine arrived in mailboxes and on newsstands before its April 1 publishing date.
The Mets' switchboard lit up with calls, and confused reporters headed to St. Petersburg, Fla., to get a glimpse of this unknown phenom.
Every piece of the story, written by George Plimpton of "Paper Lion" fame, was carefully orchestrated.
"Frank Cashen, our late GM, had a relationship with (SI managing editor) Mark Mulvoy," said Jay Horwitz, the Mets longtime public-relations man. "Frank calls me into his office and says, 'How's your sense of humor these days?'"
Cashen told Horwitz that Plimpton came up with an April Fool's joke that would involve a fake Mets pitcher and asked Horwitz to help coordinate it.
For the Mets, the prank was an easy sell.
In 1985, the Mets were the best team in New York — with Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry as young stars — but they still played second fiddle to the Yankees, who had last won it all in 1977 and 1978.
The real Sidd Finch was actually a junior high school art teacher from Oak Park, Ill., named Joe Berton, who was a friend of Sports Illustrated photographer Lane Stewart.
"Lane calls me up and says, I got a baseball story involving the New York Mets," Berton told cllct. "He goes, Yeah, it's about this guy whose got a great fastball, 160-some mile an hour fastball. All he's got is it a French horn and a food bowl and a rug.
"And I'm thinking, 'This is too crazy. But I like, well, it is the Mets, yeah?' ... He goes, 'Well, get yourself a French horn and a pair of work boots and a food bowl. You've got to be the guy come to St Petersburg."
Berton talked to the school's music teacher and convinced him to borrow a French horn. He also borrowed a size-14 pair of work boots and bought a wooden bowl and what could count as a Tibetan rug.
The idea was it was originally going to be a column, but the pictures turned out so good it became a huge, 14-page feature.
Not wanting to ruin the joke, very few players were let in on it.
Despite all the clues — at Harvard, Finch slept on ...
