Sidd Finch was the baseball pitcher who could throw a 168mph fastball and went to spring training with the New York Mets in the mid-'80s.

Finch had grown up in an English orphanage prior to his adoption by an archeologist who was later killed in a plane crash in the mountains of Nepal. Finch briefly attended Harvard before dropping out to study yogic mastery in a Tibetan monastary. These teachings allowed him to learn to throw a baseball more than 60mph faster than had ever been recorded (with pin-point accuracy no less), making him unhittable.

The extraordinary tale of Finch, as written by the late, great George Plimpton, caused much excitement to me and my pre-teen friends when it appeared in a Sports Illustrated story during spring training in 1985. The Mets apparently didn't have a catcher that could catch him and Finch's odd habits like pitching with a boot on one foot and barefoot on the other had us talking about little else.

Of course, it would prove to be a hoax. The cover date for the issue that detailed Finch's exploits was the first week of April and taking the first letter from each word of the piece's byline spelled out the phrase "Happy April Fools."

My friends and I weren't the only one's that fell for the prank as Sports Illustrated

received more than 2000 letters inquiring about the story. I suppose my friends and I were like a lot of people, overlooking the spectacularly implausability of the story in our desire and want to believe in something so amazing.

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