The Curious Case of Sidd Finch

by George Plimpton

  Davey Johnson shifted the tobacco in his jaw and said, "Well, you can't eschew it. You got no choice," and he showed Sidd how to hold the bat, the trademark up, and so forth. They had a little session right there in the dugout.

  Tudor's first pitch was a big curve that broke in the dirt two feet from the plate and skipped to the backstop. I turned to Debbie Sue and said, "My God, Sidd's going to intimidate the pitcher into walking him."

  Alas, Tudor grooved the next few pitches to see what would happen; it was immediately apparent that Sidd was hardly a threat.

  What was odd was that the crowd accepted Sidd's troubles without catcalls or outward signs of derision. It was as if, however clumsy or out of place he was at the plate, or fielding Ronn Reynolds' pegs from the plate, they knew at the start of every inning that he would stalk slowly out to the pitcher's mound, gaze curiously at the rosin bag as if tempted to pick it up, turn, and, murmuring what Debbie Sue and I knew were private ngags, begin to mow the Cardinals down.

  In the late innings Sidd began tiring. The will expended in sailing the ball in at such velocity had its consequences: I could see his knees tremble and his body sag after the follow-through, as if his effort had drained him of even the strength to stand. His knees would float toward the ground. It must have been frustrating for the Cardinals, standing along the length of their dugout steps, to realize all they had to do was get the bat on the ball and push it out toward the mound to be sure to get on base. But the condition was momentary. After a few seconds on the mound we could almost see the strength flow back into him.

  Out in the upper-left-field deck, almost from the first, the fans began to hang out the red K's, which are usually reserved to represent each of Dwight Gooden's strikeouts. At the end of the first inning, three red K's appeared. By the end of the seventh, twenty-one hung in a long row along the length of the upper-deck facade. That was apparently the entire allotment available-the K hangers never assuming they would need to put out more than twenty-one.

  Yet here they were on this hot August afternoon with this new guy Finch, with every K banner they possessed in a smart neat row along the facade ... and two more innings to go! They began improvising. A sheet banner I had noticed in the vicinity that had read "SYOSSET LOVES THE METS" suddenly disappeared and was torn up and sacrificed to make additional K squares. They were sloppy, tattered on the sides, the K's clumsy and in scratchy black lines.

  For the top half of the ninth inning-the Mets were ahead 5-o at this point-the entire stadium stood. A great roar went up at the last strikeout of the game. Sidd had thrown the ball eighty-two times. The umpire had called a ball in the seventh inning, the inning Sidd had to wear his white sock-very likely just to give the impression he was on top of things. Debbie Sue looked out at the leftfield tier through her binoculars and announced that the twenty-seventh K was the back of a man's shirt. Someone out there had ripped it off his back so that astonishing line of K's could be completed.

  The Mets streamed out of the dugout at the last pitch, but it was not the pell-mell rush that one might have expected, nothing at all like the cap-throwing euphoria typical with the usual no-hitter. Ronn Reynolds did not launch himself into Sidd's arms, as Yogi Berra did into Don Larsen's after his perfect game in the 1956 World Series. The Mets marched out like people who are a little late for a football game, not quite breaking into a trot. After all, most of them had never said more than a word or two to Sidd. He was "that monk guy." He had been carted into their midst just the week before-like an unpacked piece of furniture. They surrounded him, shouting happily at him, but he was escorted off the field more as if they were an armed guard.

  The Cardinals stood on the top step of their dugout gazing out toward the goings-on as if watching some sort of display with which they had not been involved in any way at all.

  Debbie Sue and I went home after the game. We thought of waiting around near the clubhouse entrance to try to get to Sidd.

  "You don't think he needs us?" she asked in the car.

  "He must have a hundred shepherds by now," I replied.

  "We're going to lose him, Owl," she said after a while. "We've moved him from one institution into another."

  When we reached the apartment we turned on the Mullins' television set just in time to see a camera move in for a close-up of Sidd on the pitcher's mound. They were recapping the game. The particular segment we saw was in slow motion. His long face, slightly worried, filled the screen, as if we were being given his image to memorize for posterity. The muscles of his cheeks worked slightly, sucking on something within. His mouth opened and we had a brief glimpse of a white peppermint Life Saver encircling the very tip of his tongue. The camera pulled back hastily, as if the intimacy of his chewing habit was not to be dwelt on.

  XIV

  EBBIE SUE heard Sidd's steps coming up the stairwell and she ran to meet him. He came in looking somewhat harried. His shoulders sagged. He looked at me as if I were somewhat responsible for the rigors of his afternoon, or more particularly what he had gone through in the locker room afterward.

  "I was not informed," he said. "I had an idea that one dressed and went home."

  He sat down in a chair and looked out at the river.

  "You pitched the perfect game," I said. "You did the equivalent"-I felt awkward using the reference-"of reaching Nirvana-bodichetta. It's the ultimate. Turn on the television and you'll see."

  Debbie Sue hung over his shoulders. "We're so proud of you, Owl and me. We saw your peppermint a little while ago. It was on ABC."

  "I did not find the Mets a particularly affectionate group of people," Sidd told us. "The conversation I had with Mr. Johnson about how to hold the bat was the only one I had until the end of the game. I felt like a leper. I said to Mookie Wilson, `My congratulations to you on your home run.' He had just hit the ball over a fence in the sixth inning. It put the team ahead by three runs. I put my fingers up like everyone else when he came into the dugout so that I could bestow a high-five salute to him for doing such a thing. He turned away."

  "The creep!" Debbie Sue said.

  "That's a famous tradition," I told him. "If a pitcher is on the way to a no-hitter, none of his teammates talk to him. That's what was happening."

  "The Mets were all huddled at one end of the dugout."

  "That's right. Quite natural."

  "I will have to apologize to them and to Mr. Mookie Wilson for not understanding this."

  I asked what had happened in the locker room.

  "I was carried about in there as if in the motion of a great wave," Sidd told us. "There was a considerable amount of shouting and popping of flash bulbs and the stretching of microphones toward me. Some people were trying very hard to get me to Kiner's Corner. What, may I ask, is Kiner's Corner?"

  I explained that Ralph Kiner was a famous home-run hitter who once played with the Pittsburgh Pirates. I said, "His corner-actually it's spelled with a K, which is ... well, it's just spelled that way-is a little studio under the stands where Kiner interviews the stars of the game. The stars sit in there with their uniforms on and tell him what happened."

  "Doesn't Mr. Kiner know what happened?"

  "He does. The star is there to reinforce what Mr. Kiner knows. There is considerable curiosity about heroics in this country."

  "I never got to Kiner's Korner," Sidd said. "Instead I was pushed along in the locker room to a tub of ice cubes. They wanted to put my arm in there. `Sit down on this stool and put it in.' I stuck my arm in there. It made them all feel much happier. It was unbelievably cold and uncomfortable.

  "Ronn Reynolds came by and he put his left hand in the ice. We smiled at each other. He said a very pleasant thing. He said it was the greatest moment of his life, even if someone else would have to cut the meat on his plate that evening. I thanked him for his sentiments. I could barely hear what he was saying for all the shouting. Most of the people wanted to know either how I felt or how my arm felt."

  "How is your arm?" asked Deb
bie Sue.

  "It is still cold from the tub of ice cubes," Sidd said. "That is the worst thing about pitching that I have experienced so far-to have my arm plunged into a tub of ice cubes."

  We took him over to the television set to show him what an impact he had made. By chance, Davey Johnson was on the station we tuned into-a repeat of an interview he had given in his manager's office not long after the game. He was seated at his desk in his undershirt.

  "I might pitch him every other day," he was saying.

  "What about his arm, Davey?"

  Johnson shrugged. "He says his arm is cosmically in tune. I gotta believe him. They tell me Satchel Paige pitched a hundred and sixty-three games in a rowpitched in the Negro leagues 'by the hour,' as he used to say. Maybe my guy can do the same."

  "Did you see Johnson after the game?" I asked Sidd.

  "He came by the ice tub," Sidd said. "He was very pleasant. He said, `Nice game, kid.' He asked me if I could perform again on Thursday. I said it was up to him. He also asked after my arm."

  Debbie Sue knelt in front of the set and shifted to the public broadcast channel. The MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour was in progress. MacNeil was saying in his introduction, "Throwing a baseball is the sequential snapping of shoulder, elbow, and wrist. Throwing with one hand very likely produced the very first lateralization in the human brain, long before humankind developed language skills. Humankind had to knock down a rabbit before he could talk about how he wanted it served. Therefore," MacNeil went on, "throwing something is an ancient skill concentrated most commonly in the left hemisphere of the brain, and one that has not markedly advanced over the millennia. There have been no great leaps forward until the phenomenon of Sidd Finch. Tonight we will be talking to Dr. Ernest Caroline, a sports sociologist from Carnegie Polytech." The doctor's face appeared on a screen behind MacNeil, who spun slowly to listen to him.

  First we had a view of Sidd himself on the mound, a glimpse even of his peppermint; then the camera pulled back to allow the hoist of his delivery to show in the frame; then in a sideview we saw the pitch itself. In the slow-motion replay the ball was possible to see. It moved against the slow haze of a motionless frieze of faces in the stands with a speed that was quite foreign, a streak against the background that seemed rather from a glitch or a malfunction in the television set.

  "What we have here," Dr. Caroline said, "is a most curious and possible deranging influence on baseball. Something will have to be done, but, frankly, Robert, I'm not sure what. It's the kind of discrepancy you get in Little League baseball when one of these great tall twelve-yearolds turns up-all elbows and a great, whippy arm-who can deliver the ball down the shortened chute of a Little League pitching alley, a third shorter than the regular distance-like a bullet. It gets the kids coming up to bat just about whimpering, scared half to death. These big overgrown phenoms can strike out twenty-one kids in a seven-inning Little League game, even more because the catcher'll let the occasional third strike slip by, which'll get the batter safely down to first. They go on, these terrors, decimating the League until the authorities come in and see what's going on. What they do is take these kids and move them up to the next level, where the distance from mound to plate is less generous. The problem with Finch is that he's already at the highest level-the major leagues. There's no place they can send him up to...."

  Robert MacNeil did not seem especially perturbed. His large, pleasant face filled the screen and we watched him shift to a baseball historian-from Cooperstown, I believe: "Mr. Deane, you have heard Dr. Caroline speaking from a sociologist's point of view. Do you find his testimony disturbing?"

  "I would have to admit," Mr. Deane said, "that Mr. Finch put on a startling show, to put it mildly. A lot depends on whether he can duplicate it. But you must understand that there's been tinkering from the beginning to get the balance between pitcher and batter exactly right."

  "Would you explain?" MacNeil asked.

  "Well, in the earliest days of baseball-the mid-nineteenth century-the pitcher, who incidentally was also called the `pecker' or the `feeder,' had to throw the ball underhand. The batter could ask to have the ball thrown exactly where he wanted it. Before the first pitch the umpire would ask him whether he wanted the ball high or low and this would be indicated to the pitcher. It wasn't until 1884 that pitchers were allowed to throw overhand, and not until 1887 when this practice of the batter calling for what he wanted-a `fat pitch'-was discontinued. Did you know that Walt Whitman, of all people, was very upset when the curveball came into being at the turn of the century?" We watched MacNeil's eyebrows go up.

  "Yes, pitchers simply got tired of serving up the ball, and began in their frustration to practice deceptioncurving the ball and so forth. It outraged the old gentleman. He deplored such a thing as morally reprehensible and unfair. `I should call it everything that is damnable,' he wrote. Oh, there've been all sorts of changes. The original distance between the mound and the plate was fortyfive feet. Pitchers could get a man out by hitting him between the bases with the ball. `Plugging a man' it was called. The spitball was outlawed. Aluminum bats aren't allowed in the majors. So the tinkering goes on ... to keep that extraordinary balance provident. It may be that Finch will require some kind of adjustment-I can't imagine what, frankly."

  "I see," said MacNeil.

  The historian was having a good time. "Did you know," he said, "that in 1886 a rule had to be passed restricting the first- and third-base coaches to boxes near their bases? Up until then the coaches could range down the line and practically perch on the opposing catcher to scream things into his ears. The St. Louis Browns had a pair of coaches who were famous at this-Charles Com- iskey and Bill Gleason. These guys would come down their respective baselines and the catcher'd get it, hot and heavy, in both ears, from about ten feet away."

  "Think of that!" said Robert MacNeil. "Well, now we'd like to shift to Providence, Rhode Island, where we will be talking . . "

  Debbie Sue leaned forward and turned the channels. We found a number of baseball people on the programs. Indeed, one of them was a St. Louis Cardinal who had actually batted against Sidd. He said the experience reminded him of Joe Garagiola (an ex-Cardinal himself) grousing to an umpire after striking out against a fastball pitcher, "Ump, that pitch sounded off the plate to me. Your ears are bum, that's what!"

  Most of the players interviewed couldn't really comment on the situation because they hadn't seen Finch pitch, except maybe a couple of innings repeated on television. Their jaws worked slightly on gum. They shifted in their chairs. I heard one say that Finch's rotator cuff was going to solve the situation. "His arm is going to explode out there on the mound, that's my guess. A guy's muscle structure just won't take that strain time after time. There's going to be a big pop! The guy's arm will hang straight down, and afterward he won't be able to pick up a coffee cup."

  The major networks had managed to corral two high baseball officials-Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, and Bob Brown, the president of the American League. Brown, a former third baseman with the New York Yankees in their glory years, was arguing that Finch should get out of the National League and come over to his.

  TV Anchorman: Why is that-if I may ask?-that you would want him in the American League?

  Brown: He's too dominant a force in the National League. In our league we have designated hitters. They bat for the pitcher-who is traditionally worthless at the plate. That would establish a type of equality.

  TV Anchorman: Do you really think so? The guy's struck out every man he's faced.

  Brown: He wouldn't have an easy time with our players. I'll guarantee that. Of course we'd have to check to see that Finch isn't using a mysterious Tibetan sap on the ball.

  TV Anchorman: I beg your pardon?

  A small smile played on Brown's features. The sportscaster apparently had no idea he was being mildly joshed. He leaned forward and continued earnestly.

  TV Anchorman: Have you seen Finch pitch?

  Brown: Can't say th
at I have.

  The sportscaster then put a series of "What if?" questions: "What if the balance between the pitcher and batter really was upset?"

  The president-somewhat more seriously, it seemed to me-began talking about regulations the leagues could initiate if there really were problems.

  Brown: Let me give you an example. The Texas Rangers have a pitcher, Greg Harris, who is ambidextrous. He's actually a natural right-hander, but off the left he can throw a pretty good fastball-timed in the low eighties by one of those radar guns. The Texas coaches told him he could throw left-handed in a game if he could get that fastball up in the high eighties. In the meantime they designed a special mitt for him, with a thumb on either side. The League came down with a rule about all this-that Harris could switch from one arm to the other in the middle of a game, even in the middle of an inning, but not during an at-bat. The rule was that Harris had to decide which side he wanted to throw off when the guy stepped into the batter's box. I'll tell you something I'll bet you didn't know. Harris is an ex-Met. Yup! The Mets seem to spawn these strange pitching freaks....

  TV Anchorman: What about Finch?

  Brown: In the case of Finch we could rule [that owlish smile appeared again] that Buddhist monks from Tibet, or from that general area, must move back four feet. We'd require the clubs to build little mounds back there-just for Buddhist monks ... I believe they call them stupas.

  Brown pointed out that even in modern times adjustments to perfect the balance between pitcher and batter are made. "Remember in sixty-nine when the pitcher was dominating?" he remarked. "That was the year Bob Gibson had a 1.112 earned run average and Denny McLain won thirty-one games-the first time since the thirties anyone had a record like that. The authorities lowered the pitching mound from fifteen inches to ten and they cut a couple of inches off the strike zone both at the bottom and the top. The American League brought in the designated hitter. The next year the batting average went up twenty points. So why not a stupa back there for Buddhist overachievers ... ?"