Sidd FinchSidd Finch was the subject of a notorious article by George Plimpton in the April 1985 issue of Sports Illustrated. Sidd (short for Siddhartha) Finch was supposedly a rookie baseball player in training with the New York Mets. 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 mph, far above the record of a mere 103 mph. Finch grew up in an English orphanage and was adopted by an archeologist who later died in a plane crash in Nepal. After briefly attending Harvard University, he went to Tibet to learn "yogic mastery of mind-body", which was the source of his pitching prowess. 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 spells out "Happy April Fools Day". Despite this clue and the obvious absurdity of the article, many people believed Finch actually existed. The magazine announced it was a hoax on April 15. Futher reading
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