Sidd Finch was a touted rookie pitcher for the New York Mets in 1985. 
How fast was his fastball said to be?

Hi 4103,

According to an article in the April 1, 1985 issue of Sports
Illustrated, Sidd Finch's fastball was 168 miles per hour.

Sports Illustrated ran the story about Sidd Finch as an April Fool's
joke, and it fooled many people.

An article on the Museum of Hoaxes web site describes the Sports
Illustrated article and the two subsequent SI articles.  Here are a
couple of snippets from that article:

"In its edition for the first week of April, 1985, Sports Illustrated
published an article by George Plimpton that described an incredible
rookie baseball player who was training at the Mets camp in St.
Petersburg, Florida. The player was named Sidd Finch (Sidd being short
for Siddhartha, the Indian mystic in Hermann Hesse's book of the same
name), and he could pitch a baseball at 168 mph with pinpoint
accuracy."

"Sports Illustrated received almost 2000 letters in response to the
article, and it became one of their most famous stories ever. On April
8 they declared that Finch had held a press conference in which he
said that he had lost the accuracy needed to throw his fastball and
would therefore not be pursuing a career with the Mets. On April 15
they admitted that the story was a hoax."

Here is a link to the article on the Museum of Hoaxes web site:
"April 1, 1985: Sidd Finch"
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/siddfinch.html


Another good article about the hoax can be found on the NY Daily News
web site:
"From Sports Illustrated: Sidd Finch" by Jonathan Lewin
http://www.nydailynews.com/city_life/big_town/v-bigtown_archive/story/18198p-17240c.html


Search strategy:

"sidd finch" mets fastball
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=%22sidd+finch%22+mets+fastball&btnG=Google+Search


Regards,
sldreamer

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Request for Answer Clarification by 4103-ga on 31 Mar 2003 20:40 PST

So where can I get a Topps baseball card of Finch?

---

Clarification of Answer by sldreamer-ga on 31 Mar 2003 21:01 PST

Hi 4103!

Since Sidd Finch is a fictional character, Topps never produced a
baseball card for him.

Interestingly enough, the actual Sports Illustrated article does have
a mention of Topps:

"Conversations with Finch himself have apparently been exercises if
futility. All conventional inducements–huge contracts, advertising
tie-ins, the banquet circuit, ticker-tape parades, having his picture
on a Topps bubble-gum card, chatting on Kiner’s Korner (The Mets’
postgame TV show) and so forth–mean little to him."

Here is a copy of the Sidd Finch article that appeared in the April 1,
1985 issue of Sports Illustrated:
http://www.southlakebaseball.org/sidd.htm


Search strategy:

"sidd finch" topps
://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=ISO-8859-1&safe=off&q=%22sidd+finch%22+topps&btnG=Google+Search


Happy April Fool's Day!
sldreamer