Way back in the day, way before the internet, Sport Illustrated published a story by George Plimpton about a baseball player named Sidd Finch, a Buddhist, signed by the Mets, with a 168mph fastball.
The year was 1985, I was 17, and I recall coming home from school and my older brother and his friends were reading SI and going nuts over the prospects of this being true.
The Mets were in on the gag too and here is a pic of the fictitious Finch with pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre:
Here’s the lead in to the article:
The secret cannot be kept much longer. Questions are being asked, and sooner rather than later the New York Mets management will have to produce a statement. It may have started unraveling in St. Petersburg, Fla. two weeks ago, on March 14, to be exact, when Mel Stottlemyre, the Met pitching coach, walked over to the 40-odd Met players doing their morning calisthenics at the Payson Field Complex not far from the Gulf of Mexico, a solitary figure among the pulsation of jumping jacks, and motioned three Mets to step out of the exercise. The three, all good prospects, were John Christensen, a 24-year-old outfielder; Dave Cochrane, a spare but muscular switch-hitting third baseman; and Lenny Dykstra, a swift centerfielder who may be the Mets’ lead-off man of the future.
and the link to the genius original: The Curious Case of Sidd Finch
HT: Adam Warner who reminded me of this classic.