Sidd Finch

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).

[1] In early 1985, Mark Mulvoy, the managing editor of Sports Illustrated, noticed that a cover date that year would fall on April 1.

[2][3] Plimpton reported that Hayden Siddhartha[4] "Sidd" Finch was a rookie baseball pitcher in training with the New York Mets after being discovered in Old Orchard Beach, Maine.

[3] 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,[4] 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.

Sports Illustrated photographer Lane Stewart recruited his friend, Joe Berton, who was a junior high art teacher from Oak Park, Illinois, to portray Finch.

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.

Mets fans were overjoyed at their luck in finding such a player, and flooded Sports Illustrated with requests for more information.

[9] 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.