I have been honored to be part of the Mets organization for 46 years now. Over that time, I have been associated with some pretty great events. One thing I am extremely proud of is to have played a small role in perhaps the greatest sports hoax in the history of baseball, or for that matter in the history of all sports.
The hoax, prank or joke, whatever you want to call it came to life 40 years ago in the April 1, 1985 Sports Illustrated cover story. The story was titled “The Curious Case of Sidd Finch” written by the renowned sportswriter, George Plimpton. According to the article, Sidd was a rookie pitcher training with us in St. Petersburg after being discovered in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. He also wore one shoe, a heavy hiker’s boot, when pitching.
Sidd was raised in an English orphanage, learned yoga in Tibet, and by the way could throw a fastball 168 mph. As an aside, he also played the French horn.
It was like a bombshell when the story hit. For a period of three or four days, the entire baseball world brought our subplot. It had to be true because it was in SI and it had to be true because the great George Plimpton wrote it. George was also the co-founder of the Paris Review and he would never lie.
In fact the entire story was completely made up by George. It was right there in front of everybody but no one picked it up right away. The subhead of the article read:
“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 first letters of these words spell out “Happy April Fools Day — a(h) fib.”
Let me take you back to how this all started. It was late February 1985 and I had just settled in to my spring training office in St Petersburg. I got a call from our general manager, the late Frank Cashen, who asked me to come see him.
I walked over to meet him and was joined by Jean Coen, Frank’s administrative assistant. Frank asked me if I had a sense of humor and I laughed yes. Frank told me he had just gotten a call from his friend Mark Mulvoy, who was the managing editor of SI. Mark had asked Plimpton to come up with an April 1 story and when he couldn’t find something to his liking he made up one of his own, our buddy Sidd.
Frank wanted to know if I could help sell it. I said by all means. Working with human interest stories was in my bones. For eight years at Fairleigh Dickinson University as the SID, I sold story ideas on a one-armed soccer player, a priest who played hockey, a 43-year-old freshman football player and a 5-4 second baseman who was hit by a pitch 128 times in his career.
This was right up my alley
We didn’t let too many Mets people know what the plan was. Of course, Davey Johnson was in the loop and Mel Stottlemyre was my go-to guy. In mid March, I met Lane Stewart, the photographer for SI at our Huggins Stengel Fieldhouse. We sent up photo ops for the story. We gave Sidd a locker, his number was 21, between Darryl Strawberry and George Foster. Sidd went down to the beach to play his French horn.
I spoke to Straw the other day and he remembered Sidd with a smile. “I remember thinking how could a guy who looked like that throw that hard.”
Kevin Mitchell, a rookie back than recalled interacting with Sidd and found him to be a fun guy with a great sense of humor.
Dwight Gooden, who was the rookie of the year in 1984, thought the hoax was real at first.
”I knew a little, but not too much,” said Gooden, “and it wasn’t until the third day I found out it was a prank.”
Lane took photos of Sidd with all the guys I went to some of our younger players — Dave Cohcrane, Ronn Reynolds, John Christensen and Lenny Dykstra — and asked for their help. I told them we had this young phenom coming in that we needed their help.
I didn’t spill all the beans, I just told them we had this youngster who you wouldn’t believe.
We erected a huge closed tarp on the field where Sidd was to throw BP. All the kids bought in and were great in the photos.
April 1 was a Sunday and the story started to surface a few days before. We held a mock press conference with Reynolds, a catcher. We burnt a hole in his glove and said this was from Sidd’s 104-mph curve. Christensen and Cochrane said they never saw somebody throw as hard. Dykstra was in awe.
The one who sold it the best was Mel. He had such credibility because of his great Yankee career. There is no doubt in my mind people believed it because Mel was involved.
The writers would ask how would Sidd fit into the rotation. Mel said will just have to wait and see. We have to find a place for him because he is such a talent.
Plimpton kept it going, too. He made himself unavailable to the media which added to the mystique.
When the story hit the newsstand, my phone rang off the hook. I had a nasty conversation with a sports editor of a New York paper and he asked how could I have given the story to SI when his paper was there every day. I remained calm and asked how would he feel if he got the scoop and I gave it to SI. He was not amused.
My beat guys were not to happy with me either. They felt I had played favorites.
Two baseball owners called the editor of SI wanted to know if the story was true. The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan also called Sports Illustrated wanted to know the truth. The spots editor of Life Magazine was really upset, too!
One of our coaches who moved on to another team called me in disbelief and said no one from his new club had ever heard of Sidd. I just laughed again.
I have to give a shout out to Bobby Schaeffer, who was the manger of our Triple-A team at Tidewater. He made a scouting report on Sidd and called him a great prospect.
Slowly but surely the truth began to seep out. On April 7 at Al Lang Stadium we held a press conference that Sidd had moved on from baseball and was moving on to golf. Sidd, who was really Joe Berton, a junior high school teacher from Chicago, came back for the occasion. Joe was recruited by Lane and they were close friends.
Joe was a big Cubs fan at the time and he has remained tight with Lane. He never thought this would be as big as it turned out. He asked me to give him his name plate so so he could remember his time as a Met.
I have kept in touch with Lane, too. He said the people at SI never expected it to be this big that we would be still be talking about Sidd 40 years later. He said the magazine was never trying to fool anybody, just have fun.
Its been 40 years and Ron Darling still remembers with fondness the spring he spent with Sidd (I mean Joe in St. Petersburg).
“That was my first introduction to a New York media experience,” said Ron. “It was wonderful. I loved when Joe walked around talking to the guys. I am a big reader and I was thrilled to be a part of something that George Plimpton was associated with in some capacity. I didn’t know everything that was going on but I knew the premise was a hoax.
“When I got back to NYC that year all my friends wanted to talk about Sidd. It was an experience I never will forget.”
Jay Horwitz started his Mets PR career 45 years ago on April Fools’ Day, 1980. One of his major accomplishments is helping spread the Sidd Finch story, perhaps the No. 1 hoax in sports history.