I just read an article in the new Sports Illustrated (Where Are They Now?) about a guy who could throw things hard and fast. 168 mph fastball? Are they putting me on? Does this guy really exist? The whole story reeks of BS.
Umm… Well… It is BS.
This was a followup to a story that first ran in an issue of Sports Illustrated that came out on a April 1.
If you read my post, you would have read this: you technically can get a 168 mph fast ball if you were on a train going about 140mph. This probably has nothing to do with anything so ill put a sock in it.
The funny thing about the updated Sid Finch article is that they showed Finch playing cricket after his “retirement” from baseball. 168mph? Beat that, Shoaib Ahktar!
God, this pisses me off. I thought that article was serious, because I didn’t think a magazine like SI would mess with it’s readers like that. Oh well.
Sid Finch is back? YES!
Now, if the Phillies would only sign him and put him in the bullpen…
You know, Montfort, when I saw the original article, my first thought was “Stupid Mets, they get all the good signings. Why can’t the Phillies get one?”
But then I discovered cricket, lovely cricket. I’ve never looked back. Good thing, 'cause I see the Phillies are last again 
Cricket, eh? Why watch that when there’s baseball to be watched?
Anyway, hockey training camps open this weekend. Just in time.
GO FLYERS!
Grrrrr…
It should have been a tip-off that George Plimpton wrote the Siddhartha Finch article, way back when…
I’ve never liked Sports Illustrated – at some point, I got the impression, rightly or wrongly, that SI gave golf too much coverage, and that was unacceptable.
Now I have extra reason to dislike SI – I got snookered by that Finch story.
I remember when they originally published the Sidd Finch hoax; it was in 1984, IIRC.
Funny to see it pop up again after all this time. But I figured that’s what this thread had to be about, from the title.
Knowing ahead of time that Sid Finch was fictional, I loved the “Where are They Now?” article about him. It cracked me up how they made it look like their admission that he was fictitious was just a cover-up.
IIRC, down the left hand side of the original article, the first letter of each line spelled out something like “Happy April Fools Day.”
168 mph?!? Must be in metric…
No, it’s in dubly.
Ain’t no baseball in the UK 
Can you believe I don’t even know who’s playing for the Phillies anymore? But then there’s cricket. Guess it’s just one of those things most US’ers will never get to know about.
Sid Finch has been a joke in SI for many, many years. He pitched barefoot, I believe. The photograph of him pitching was retouched to make his feet look huge. I think George Plimpton made him up as a combination satire of baseball hopefuls like “The Bird” who never quite live up to their billing and a send up of sports writing. I think I first heard the name about 20 years ago.
The reason I heard about it was that thousands of fans were taken in by the joke and rumors were running wild–either baseball fans are very credulous or SI should be more careful about playing jokes–and the rumormill itself became a news item.
You’re right about cricket. Everytime I wander by it on cable TV (once a year or so), I’ll try to watch five minutes of it, but it’s so inscrutably impossible to learn that I just channel flip from there.
Anyway, back to my hijack. The Phils have a great core of young hitters, but they’re slumping now. The pitching’s okay, but the relief pitchers, as a whole, suck rocks. Maybe next year…
nfortunately, I heard that Scott Boras(s) is his agent…
One of the big tipoffs should have been the fact that you didn’t see his face in any of the pictures in the article. I’m surprised more people didn’t pick up on that when the article ran. I know that if I found a guy who could throw 168 MPH, I’d make sure his face ended up in the article (and he’d be on the cover too!).
Zev Steinhardt