SIDD FINCH!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidd_Finch

On April 1, 1985, Sports Illustrated published an article about a new pitching prospect for the New York Mets named named Hayden Siddhartha “Sidd” Finch.  The story was written by George Plimpton and it was very funny.  I was stunned to learn that a lot of people at work actually believed this nonsense.  The story was hopelessly absurd.  Plimpton had Finch throwing the ball 168 miles per hour and described him as torn between pursuing professional baseball or the French Horn.   Just to make sure everyone knew this was absurd, Plimpton had Finch wearing a heavy hiker’s boot on one foot while going bare foot with the other while pitching.  In addition, the subhead of the title read:

“He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse.  Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style.  Sidd’s deciding about yoga – and his future in baseball.”  If you take the first letter from each word in this sentence you get:  “Happy April Fool’s Day – ah fib”

Sports Illustrated got the New York Mets to play along with the joke.  They took pictures of a junior high school art teacher named Joe Berton, a stand-in for the fictional “Finch” posed next to Mel Stottlemyre, the Met’s pitching coach.   The Mets even gave Finch a locker between George Foster and Darryl Strawberry.

Incredibly, a lot of supposedly smart people bought this hook, line and sinker.  Mets fans were overjoyed at the new prospect, and Sports Illustrated was flooded with requests for more information.  It was even reported that two MLB general managers called Commissioner of Baseball Peter Ueberroth to ask how a batter could safely Finch and his 168 mph fastball.  ABC, CBS, NBC and the local St. Petersburg, Florida newspaper all sent reporters to a press conference starring Mr. Finch.  At the press conference, Joe Berton, alias Sidd Finch, announced his retirement.

Perhaps this helps some of you understand why so many people in the main stream media continue to believe in Barack Obama.  In many ways, the Obama narrative is more absurd than the fictional Sidd Finch.  Did they really believe that a man who stumbled through Occidental and Columbia and then worked as a community organizer in Chicago miraculously got into Harvard because of his academic brilliance?  Were they really convinced that a man who never had any executive experience at any level was somehow qualified to be President of the United States?  Did they honestly expect a man who wasn’t even a Boy Scout to have the skills necessary to be Commander in Chief?  Were they really willing to trust someone who told so many obvious lies about his own personal history and refused to release any documents, including his own birth certificate, to support his ridiculously thin resume?  Is it possible that they were willing to believe that someone who never even took a first-aid course was fully qualified to restructure our health insurance system?  The obvious answer is yes, yes, yes, yes and yes again.

Obviously, if NBC, CBS and ABC were willing to believe in Sidd Finch, it is easier to understand why they believed in Obama.   Sidd Finch was an obvious joke.  Eventually even the main stream media figured that out, primarily because Sports Illustrated finally admitted it was all a hoax.  I wonder if we could get Sports Illustrated to publish an article explaining that the entire Obama narrative was also a hoax.

Unfortunately, this joke is on us, except that this really isn’t funny.

TDM

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