Hoaxer George Plimpton

A wonderful hoax perpetrated by writer/editor George Plimpton in Sports Illustrated magazine was the Sidd Finch affair.

Plimpton achieved celebrity via his participant journalism stories and TV specials, wherein he "played football" in the NFL, boxed (more or less) with the heavyweight champ, made a floppy-ankle attempt to play in a pro ice hockey game, etc. He also was founder and longtime editor of the Paris Review, a high-quality literary periodical.

The Sidd Finch hoax was a 14-page story, with illustrations, that appeared in the April 1, 1985, issue of Sports Illustrated. It told, in fine Plimpton style, about a 28-year-old English-born mystic who had lived in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet and there leaned mind-over-body techniques that enabled him to pitch a baseball at inhumanly fast speeds.

The story said that Finch, who had never played the game before, was working at the New York Mets' training camp in Florida, where he was throwing fast balls clocked at 168 miles per hour. (The fastest actual pitch ever recorded--for real-- was 103 mph.)

The Mets were in on the hoax. A tall, gangling high school teacher posed as Finch, who was pictured in the magazine alongside actual members of the Mets squad.

Sports-crazed Americans went wild over Sidd Finch, and mail poured in from readers wanting to know more. A week later, however, Plimpton and the magazine "revealed" that Finch had walked away from baseball stardom with a gallant wave, complaining of decreased pitching accuracy. The next week, Sports Illustrated told its readers the whole thing had been an April Fool hoax--all in good fun.

Baseball, of course, along with guns and Rush Limbaugh, is a topic that only the most reckless will kid about. While many readers enjoyed the hoax for its entertainment value, others were furious--some even were sore enough to cancel their subscription.

In his usual fashion, Plimpton spun the story of this hoax out into a novel.