Sidd Finch: The Pitching Marvel Who Could Throw 168 mph Fastballs

If you are a lover of tales too weird to be real (because they aren’t), you won’t want to miss this one. Join us as we peel back the layers of one of baseball’s most delightfully bizarre moments. It’s a story that combines journalism, Tibetan monks, a French horn, and a fastball so fast it probably broke the sound barrier — or at least some gullible minds. Yes, it’s time we talk about Sidd Finch, the only Major League Baseball player to master yoga, reject shoes, and throw a 168 mph pitch.

Or so they would have us believe.

The Man, The Myth, The Monk

It all began on April 1, 1985, when Sports Illustrated published an article by George Plimpton titled “The Curious Case of Sidd Finch”. The piece introduced readers to a Mets rookie prospect who had never played organized baseball but had trained in a Tibetan monastery, could pitch faster than physics should allow, and was deciding whether to pursue a career in baseball or continue playing the French horn in total seclusion.

And look — we know baseball has had its share of oddballs. (Looking at you, Rube Waddell and your tendency to chase fire trucks in the middle of a game.) But Sidd Finch? He was next level. According to the article, Sidd wore only one shoe — a heavy hiking boot on his right foot — and preferred to pitch while meditating. Honestly, who among us hasn’t tried to attain inner peace by hurling a ball at lethal velocities?

That’s Gotta Be Fake… Right?

The piece was thorough. It had stats. Quotes. Mets players chiming in. A photo of Finch himself, in full Mets uniform, looking like someone who wandered in from a backpacking trip through Nepal and accidentally found the bullpen.

The nation believed. Sports radio lines lit up. Fans were outraged that the Mets were putting all their hopes into a reclusive, barefoot Zen master with no track record but the pitching speed of a railgun. Newspapers around the world picked up the story. Rival teams began worrying about how to face this barefoot bazooka-armed enigma.

And then, of course, came the reveal: April Fools’.

Yes, in the grand tradition of elaborate pranks and people believing everything they read, Sidd Finch was a hoax. A brilliant, deadpan, masterclass in satire. The man in the photo? Joe Berton, a middle school teacher from Illinois. The stats? Fabricated. The quotes? Fictional. The Mets’ supposed golden child? About as real as a unicorn in cleats.

Baseball’s Favorite Phantom

What makes the Sidd Finch saga so delicious is how plausible it felt in the weird, wonderful world of sports. Baseball, after all, has seen its share of knuckleballers, switch-pitchers, bearded wild men, and pitchers who carried on conversations with the ball. So when someone claimed that a barefoot mystic could throw 168 mph, a not-insignificant part of the population said, “Yeah, sure, sounds about right.”

And let’s be honest — we wanted to believe. In an era before clickbait headlines and internet hoaxes every 7 seconds, this was a rare kind of myth: charming, creative, and wrapped in just enough faux-journalistic credibility to make you say, “Wait… really?”

To this day, Sidd Finch remains one of the greatest fictional athletes ever imagined — a baseball Bigfoot, caught on camera but never in a box score.

The Legacy of Sidd

Plimpton’s article has since become a legend in its own right, studied in journalism classes and remembered fondly by Mets fans who look back wistfully and say, “Hey, at least Sidd never blew a save.”

And who knows? Maybe somewhere, high in the Himalayas, there’s a man with one hiking boot, a French horn, and a fastball so fast it breaks the laws of physics and scrambles the electronic guts of radar guns everywhere.

If you haven’t read the original work of mischief that started it all, do yourself a favor and check it out here.

Staff Fact Check Note: We have confirmed that Sidd Finch does not exist. However, the French horn is still a real instrument, hiking boots remain fashionable in some circles, and the Mets continue to Mets, with or without mystical monks.

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