Today I am recalling the greatest April Fools stunt ever -- Sidd Finch, Mets pitcher who could throw 168 mph as featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated in 1985. Here is a wiki link, for those too young to know. Absolutely fooled a great many!! 30 years later, ESPN retold the story in a 30 for 30 Short.
Can anyone recall this or any other famously effective April Fools stunts??
I remember reading that article while sitting at my Grandparent's kitchen table.
I was a 4c/freshman and it had me going for a few pages.
I also recall that. I remember thinking that there were things about mind/body control to be learned in Tibet. Then feeling like a fool.
Smash that like button!
I was 15 at the time and followed sports but don't recall this one
Have to wonder how something like that would go over now.
How about an April Fools hoax where OJ admits he did it
I remember fondly this story creating a buzz, and when the punchline came out it was the first time I ever wanted to start pranking people, because it worked so well catching so many people at the same time.
That was a great story I think it was authored by George Plimpton, does anyone remember a few years back cottonelle said they were introducing a left handed toilet paper, and in the late nineties Burger King ran an ad for a left handed Whopper lol
The BBC had a couple of classics. In the 1950s they ran a story about spaghetti trees. In the 1980s, they said that Big Ben would be converted to digital.
You are right 25. It was written by George Plimpton. He was a well known and highly respected writer during that time. I found this link below which will take you to the article with the pictures from that SI article from back then.
I vaguely remember some other magazines and TV stations trying to pull some April 1 pranks over the years, but I am having trouble remembering.
(Insert your own joke about promising not to cum in her hair and then shouting "April Fools!!!")
"... n the 1980s, they said that Big Ben would be converted to digital ..."
LOL - that's a good one
w.r.t. Sidd Finch per Wikipedia:
Sidd Finch is a fictional baseball player, the subject of the notorious April Fools' Day hoax article "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch" written by George Plimpton and first published in the April 1, 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated. According to Plimpton, Finch was raised in an English orphanage, learned yoga in Tibet, and could throw a fastball as fast as 168 miles per hour (270 km/h).
Hoax[edit] In early 1985, Mark Mulvoy, the managing editor of Sports Illustrated, noticed that a cover date that year would fall on April 1. He asked George Plimpton to commemorate this with an article on April Fools' Day jokes in sports. When Plimpton found himself unable to find enough examples to craft an article, Mulvoy gave Plimpton permission to create his own hoax.
Plimpton reported that Hayden Siddhartha[3] "Sidd" Finch was a rookie baseball pitcher in training with the New York Mets. He also wore only one shoe—a heavy hiker's boot—when pitching. Finch, who had never played baseball before, was attempting to decide between a sports career and one playing the French horn. What was astonishing about Finch was that he could pitch a fastball at an amazing 168 miles per hour (270 km/h), far above the record of a "mere" 104 miles per hour (167 km/h), with pinpoint accuracy, and without needing to warm up.[3] The Mets scouting report gave Finch a "9" on fastball velocity and control: "8" is the highest score on the scale.[2]
According to Plimpton, Finch grew up in an English orphanage and was adopted by an archaeologist who later died in a plane crash in Nepal. After briefly attending Harvard University,[3] he went to Tibet to learn "yogic mastery of mind-body" under "the great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa", which was the source of his pitching prowess.[4][5] Finch decided not to pursue a baseball career, instead choosing to "play the French horn or golf or something."
The story was accompanied by photographs of Finch, including one featuring a young Lenny Dykstra and another of Finch talking with the Mets' actual pitching coach, Mel Stottlemyre. The Mets played along with the hoax, even providing a uniform and number (21) for Finch.
Sports Illustrated photographer Lane Stewart recruited his friend, Joe Berton, who was a junior high school art teacher from Oak Park, Illinois, to portray Finch.[1][2] Berton posed as Finch for the photographs (usually with his face averted from the lens).[7] Berton stands at 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and wears a size 14 shoe.
Novelist Jonathan Dee, who was working as Plimpton's assistant at the time, described Plimpton at the time of the writing of the article as, "a wreck. Nothing, he knew," wrote Dee years later, "falls quite so flat as a bad joke. Such was his anxiety that, for the one and only time in my five years in his employ, he asked me to come in to work on a Saturday. I still remember my naïve astonishment at the sight of a world-famous, successful writer actually agonizing over whether something he’d written was good enough, funny enough, believable enough, or whether the whole thing would wind up making him seem like a national jackass."[9] Dee also talked about his role in the Finch hoax in an outtake from the documentary film Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself.
Response[edit] The story was released in late March 1985.[2] Mets fans were overjoyed at their luck in finding such a player, and flooded Sports Illustrated with requests for more information.[4] The sports editor of one of New York's newspapers complained to Jay Horwitz, the public relations director of the Mets, for allowing Sports Illustrated to have the scoop. Two (unnamed) general managers called Commissioner of Baseball Peter Ueberroth to ask how their batters could face Finch safely. Meanwhile, the St. Petersburg Times sent a reporter to find Finch, and a radio talk show host claimed he saw Finch pitch.
The Mets gave Finch a locker between George Foster and Darryl Strawberry.[7] The three major networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC, and the local St. Petersburg, Florida newspapers sent reporters to Al Lang Stadium for a press conference about Finch. At the April 2 press conference, Berton announced his retirement.[11] 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".[2] Despite this clue and the obvious absurdity of the article, many people believed Finch actually existed. The magazine printed a much smaller article in the following April 8 issue announcing Finch's retirement. It then announced it was a hoax on April 15.
Aftermath[edit] Plimpton eventually broadened his article into a novel, first published in 1987.[3] The book discussed Finch's "brief re-commitment to baseball,"[6] in which stories of Sadaharu Oh and Steve Dalkowski, as well as Finch's girlfriend, inspire Finch to stick with baseball, and he reaches Major League Baseball with the Mets.
In April 2015, ESPN released a documentary on its 30 for 30 Shorts program[12] about the Sidd Finch phenomenon, as another April Fools' joke for a new generation.
On August 26, 2015, the Brooklyn Cyclones had a Sidd Finch bobblehead give-away for the thirtieth anniversary of the event. George Plimpton had died, so his son Taylor threw the ceremonial first pitch. Joe Berton attended and signed autographs on the bobbleheads. The bobblehead showed Finch in a Cyclones uniform, with French Horn and one bare foot. The Cyclones were not in existence in 1985; a team executive explained in an interview during the game radio broadcast that using the Major League team name and logo would have been much more expensive.
"... Two (unnamed) general managers called Commissioner of Baseball Peter Ueberroth to ask how their batters could face Finch safely. Meanwhile, the St. Petersburg Times sent a reporter to find Finch, and a radio talk show host claimed he saw Finch pitch ..."
LOL
Didn't Taco Bell purchase the Liberty Bell one April Fool's Day?
This is amazing! Never knew about this, as I was quite young and didn't care much about baseball at that time. But the results sound hilarious, and I'm not shocked at all that someone claimed to have seen him pitch.
One April fool's joke that always stuck out to me (as a gaming nerd) was a prank that a gaming magazine named EGM (Electronic Gaming Monthly) printed in 1992. The game 'Street Fighter 2' was wildly popular and could be found at most every video game arcade, 7-11, laundrymat, etc. One of the characters, Ryu, had a win quote that said "You must defeat Sheng Long to stand a chance". In the April edition, the magazine staff claimed to have found a way to reach Sheng Long as the final boss, and they even had pictures showing what he looked like. The stipulations to reach him were, you had to use Ryu and not get touched from the moment you start the game until you reach the usual last boss, M. Bison. Then you had to last ten rounds against Bison by getting a draw every single round (your health bars show the same amount of life).
All of that was pretty much impossibly hard to do, especially the last part. Still it was funny to watch people actually trying to do just that at the arcades for a month. Until next month's issue came out admitting it was a hoax. Funny shit!
I reverse April 1st. That day I am sane!
"..they said that Big Ben would be converted to digital."
Wow! The first digital quarterback ever! I smell a Superbowl championsip on the way......... ;-D
Richard Branson does some of the best pranks. Once he used a hotair baloon fashoned to look like a flying saucer and him and his crew dressed the part. Fortunately the cops saw the humor in it