The Curious Case of Sidd Finch

by George Plimpton

  Commissioner Peter Ueberroth, with his suave, matinee-idol manner, seemed cool and completely.unruffled by the furor. He had been quoted in the Sports Illustrated article as saying that he would have to see Sidd Finch to believe him. Now that he had seen him, what did he have to say?

  "Well, frankly, now that I've seen him ..." the Commissioner replied laconically, "I believe him."

  "What are you going to do about the situation?"

  The Commissioner was very forthright. He mentioned the regulation in his powers that allowed him to do just about anything in the "best interests" of baseball.

  "I'd bring that option into play. If Finch keeps this sort of thing up, I'd be inclined to mandate a trade from the Mets to the last-place team in their division," the Commissioner said. "At the moment, let's see, that would be Pittsburgh. A minor-league player to be named later would be part of the deal. It always is. So Finch would go there. Pittsburgh's performance would improve, and their attendance, which is about a third of the Mets, would increase dramatically."

  His questioner was aghast. "The Mets management ..." he stumbled. "Your powers as Commissioner ..."

  "If you're asking me if I have the power to do this, the answer is yes," the Commissioner said. "I'll tell you something else that I would see done. The Major League Scouting Bureau is based in Irvine, California. I'd recommend the establishment of a branch in the Himalayas. It may well be that in terms of supplying talent, the Himalayas will become the Dominican Republic of the major leagues!"

  It was obvious that, like Bob Brown, the Commissioner was having fun with his interviewer. He is noted for his puckish actions on occasion. On the day of the majorleague draft he gave an extra choice to the New York Yankees that allowed them to pick a mysterious George F. Will, who turned out to be the famous conservative essayist ("He's forty-three and bats right, very right.") ... a prank that did not go down especially well with the baseball fraternity, and especially the scribes, who feel that baseball is a religion and should not undergo ecumenical fiddlings, especially of an irreverent nature.

  "You think I'm kidding around?" the Commissioner was saying. "Hell no. I've got the best interests of baseball at heart. I've got a lot of options. I intend to exercise them."

  All evening long television pulled in analysts-ranging from medical specialists trying to explain the mechanics of Sidd's delivery to representatives from extreme religious cults who announced that their karma was just as powerful as Finch's and that their people could throw a baseball just as fast if that was what was important in life, which, of course, it wasn't. They were scornful-it was a dereliction of values.

  The last show we watched was Nightline. Billy Martin came on, his small angry face filling a huge screen beyond the host's, Ted Koppel's, shoulder. Martin, who was playing in a golf tournament in Phoenix, said that the answer to Finch would be to have him solidly plunked in the ribs with a pitch when he came up to bat. "That'll do something to his concentration, I'll guarantee. Watch him on the mound the next inning and see that fastball fade...."

  Koppel turned on his swivel chair and said into the camera, "We have heard Billy Martin say he would knock Finch down. When we come back we will find out to what degree he would carry such measures...."

  The effect of all this on Sidd was not clear. He had listened and watched intently, barely aware of Debbie Sue's ministrations. Perched on the armrest, she occasionally leaned over to rumple his hair or knead his arm muscles. One of the few times he turned away from the set was to ask if the Commissioner truly had the right to send him to Pittsburgh.

  "I am content with the Mets," he said, "although I know very few of the personnel and have yet to refer to anyone by their first name. I know very little of Pittsburgh, except that Mr. Kiner of the corner once played with that organization."

  "Yes," I said. "I think the Commissioner was having fun ... keeping his interviewer a little off balance."

  "Do you think I will have to pitch four feet back?"

  "They were kidding."

  "They are worried, though. I can tell."

  The next morning the same sort of thing appeared in the newspapers. The Finch story was on the first page of The New York Times. One of the Times writers referred to Sidd as "mysterious as the Yeti, the Abominable Snowman, who is said to prowl the bamboo thickets of the Himalayan highlands." A multitude of photographs accompanied the stories, though, oddly, many of them seemed taken on the fly-strange, fuzzy photographs of Sidd, his head turned half away, or his eyes half closed, or the picture a bit out of focus, so that he seemed almost as anonymous as a gangster hiding behind his fedora. The New York Post described Sidd as the "Kathmandu Fireballer." The Daily News called him both "the Buddhist Bolt" and "Shoeless Sidd."

  Debbie Sue looked up from the papers and announced she had come up with a nickname for Sidd. She would not tell us, ducking her head and giggling. It was too personal and silly. Finally she fessed up. It turned out to be "Debbie Sue's Sidd."

  "What?"

  "That's what the radio announcer would say-` . . . coming up to bat, "Debbie Sue's Sidd." ' Well, it's better than `the Buddhist Bolt,' " she said defensively.

  The Mets driver came for Sidd at 9:oo A.M. We heard the horn down on the street.

  "They're giving me fielding and batting practice this morning," Sidd said. "I am going to learn the signalswhat it means to `go to the mouth' and such matters." He looked at the newspapers on the dining-room table. I caught sight of a tabloid headline that read "Mom Toppled Off Cliff." "I'm not sure about all this," he said.

  "Not many people make the first page of The New York Times."

  "Maybe it won't change things," Sidd said. "I can come back here after every game. You and Debbie Sue can have your tetrazzini. We can set up a table by the window and watch the river traffic."

  "I don't think it will work out that way," I said. "It's not that simple."

  XV

  I JHE METS MANAGEMENT called at noon. Jay Horwitz asked if I would drive out to Shea Stadium to see them. They had some important news to tell me, which they thought best to do in private.

  "Isn't Sidd out there?" I asked.

  "I'll say he is," Jay replied. "He's out taking fielding and batting practice. He can't seem to do anything halfway. His peg to first-once he gets control of the ballgoes at that same god-awful speed. Lots of yelping down there."

  As I drove out to Shea in my sister's car, I turned on the radio to find every talk show along the length of the dial pulsating with speculation about Finch. There was an edge to many of the conversations-an indication that people were worried about what he was doing to the inherent structure of the game. One listener (calling in from Tucson, Arizona) had a suggestion. Wouldn't it be possible to outlaw a pitch that went over, for example, 125 miles an hour? With a speed-gun monitor, a signal would be flashed from the center-field scoreboard to the umpire that would alert him to the presence of an "overspeeding ball," as the listener put it; the umpire would raise an arm and that particular pitch would be disallowed. If the pitcher persisted in "overspeeding," the umpire could penalize the pitcher by calling a ball. The talk-show host said, "Hmmm, that's interesting, Tucson."

  He reminded his audience that the listener's idea had precedence: the spitball, a doctored pitch that slipped and swerved, was outlawed in the 193os as being too difficult to hit. The rule had a rather touching "grandfather clause" proviso-that pitchers who relied on the spitball as a major part of their repertoire were allowed to continue throwing the pitch until their careers were over. A few pitchers continued to throw the spitball, doctoring it in some way, though it was done, of course, surreptitiously. But it was important to remember, the talk-show host said, that there was a difference here. Sidd Finch's pitch, though apparently totally unhittable, hadn't been doctored. He hadn't spit on the ball, or notched it with a razor-blade tip sewn into his glove. What he did was legal. He just wound up and threw the thing! Thus if anything was to be outlawed, it would have to be the whole appa- rat
us-Sidd Finch himself.

  The next caller was from Portland. First, he praised the program. "Ed, you've got a great show there." Ed thanked him and said, "Now what's your question, Portland?"

  The listener from Portland said that first he would like to make a comment. He agreed that legislation within a sport was usually the way to handle problems of this sort. In basketball the three-second rule had kept the big guys from parking under the hoop. Controlling a superforce, the kind of guy Sidd Finch was, was simply a matter, in basketball at any rate, of moving lines and setting up time zones. "You normalize these guys."

  "And what's your question, Portland?"

  "Well, Ed, with this guy Finch we got a problem."

  "Yes."

  "Let me make a further point, Ed."

  "Go right ahead, but keep it short, Portland."

  "Let's take hockey. Suppose you found a guy whose body shape-a kind of very fat turnip-shaped body-really plugged up the goal mouth-"

  The talk-show host interrupted to say there was a rule that limited the width of the leg pads in hockey; whatever the shape of the goaltender, it was still likely that his skills would be a matter of agility and quickness of handeye reactions rather than bulk.

  The listener persisted. "Ed, I respect your judgment." His voice had a faint strain of New York in it. "But I know a circus fat guy, six hundred and fifty pounds, who would plug up a goal mouth just by squatting there. Or suppose he was one of those very big Japanese sumo wrestlers. Those guys could lie down in front of the nets. Ed, they could go to sleep out there-"

  "Thank you very much, Portland." The talk-show host sounded tired. He was saying that all sports had regulations that barred anything obviously detrimental to the spirit of the game ... such as a sumo wrestler lying in front of a hockey goal. That was what baseball had done about Eddie Gaedel, the midget who weighed sixty-five pounds and stood three feet seven inches. "He wore the number 1/8 on his jersey. I'll bet not too many of you remember that," he said. He apparently prided himself on his fund of sports trivia. "He came up to bat for the St. Louis Browns in a game against the Detroit Tigers in August 1951. Bill Veeck, who was then the St. Louis general manager, was the guy who engineered all this. The pitcher was Bob Cain. How's that for the old memory bank? Walked Gaedel, whose strike zone must have been about five inches, or four straight balls. He trotted down to first base and they sent in a pinch runner for him. Bet not too many of you guys out there know that the base runner's name was ... Jim Delsing." He stopped briefly for effect. "Now, what the league then did was to disapprove Gaedel's major-league contract on the grounds that his participation was not in the best interests of baseball."

  There was a long pause for commercials, and when Ed's program came back on he had a listener from Syracuse, New York, on the line.

  "Hey, Ed, I like your program."

  "Thanks, Syracuse. It's always good to hear from Syracuse."

  "Ed, you were talking about Eddie Gaedel, the midget?"

  "That's correct."

  "I'll bet you didn't know that right here in Syracuse, Eddie Gaedel came up to bat for a second time. That's right ... in a sandlot league."

  "No. I didn't know that. What happened?"

  "Struck out on three called strikes," the voice from Syracuse announced proudly. "That little strike zone of his didn't bother the pitcher in the slightest. Gaedel was furious. They say he turned around to the umpire and shouted at him, `You're the worst umpire I ever hope to see.' "

  "Is that so? Well, you sure flummoxed of Ed!"

  "Ed, I have a comment to make about this guy, Sidd Finch?"

  "Go right ahead, Syracuse...."

  "Why isn't it a pertinent fact that the guy is not only English, as I understand it, but a Buddhist. He worships some kind of Himalayan saint. I'm not saying that's the same as doctoring a baseball with spit-"

  "Hey, hold on there, Syracuse. What you're talking about now impinges on a guy's First Amendment rights...."

  "But, Ed. This guy hasn't sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. He's probably not even got a green card that allows him to work here. He's a tourist. A Buddhist tourist-"

  The radio host was quick with the Syracuse listener for his prejudices and clicked him off. Commercials came on again, followed by a call from Fort Lauderdale.

  "Yes, Fort Lauderdale."

  "Ed, may I produce a scenario? This guy Finch pitches, let's say, and wins eight games in a row-perfect games, eighty-one pitches, all that ... what's it going to do to the gate? It's going to drop off. The fans, even the greatest of them-Mets fans-aren't going out to see a row of games that look ... well, like forfeitures."

  The radio host disagreed. "I disagree, Fort Lauderdale. They'll come to watch Finch so they can tell their grandchildren they watched the greatest pitcher who ever lived."

  "Hell, Ed-excuse the profanity-it's odds on that their grandchildren will see this guy pitch. Don't these Buddhist guys up there in the mountains of Tibet live to be a hundred years old, eat yoghurt, and carry pianos around on their backs? That's what I hear. We may have this guy Finch screwing up the game for thirty or forty years."

  "He'll have his day in the sun, Fort Lauderdale," the talk-show host said. "Every once in a while a guy comes along who dominates a sport-a Nicklaus or a Palmer in golf, or a Manolete in bullfighting, or a Jim Clark or a Jackie Stewart in the Grand Prix, or a Joe Louis or a Muhammad Ali in boxing ... and it enhances a sport to have these guys emerge and control the roosts for a while. Correct?"

  "But, Ed, this guy's a spook. He's like a machine. Coming out to the ballpark'll be like buying tickets to see a machine gun setting out there on the mound."

  "It's an interesting point, Fort Lauderdale, but I disagree. Fans will come to see who gets the first hit off him. Some will come to see the first guy he hits. The first home run. The first guy he walks. They want to see the strategy used against him. They want to see how the hitters behave. He can't do this forever."

  "Something's going to get him long before that," the listener said. "It won't be baseball. It'll be the institutions, the tradition guys, the Establishment.... I'll bet they're working on it right now....

  "Thank you very much, Fort Lauderdale."

  A call came in from Duluth.

  "Ed, what about that bare foot. As I understand it, a baseball player in the major leagues is required to wear a proper uniform out onto the field. A pitcher can't go out there wearing a green bowler."

  "Yes, Duluth. The newspapers commented on that today. The Mets apparently went to the National League offices to get some kind of dispensation about that bare foot. Their reasoning to the offices was this: to put a shoe on the guy might throw off his balance, the timing, and maybe a Cardinal would get himself blown away. Simple as that. Or the umpire. Or some poor guy sitting in the stands behind the plate turning and asking his girl for some mustard. Bop! That'd be the last thing he'd ever see -a little mustard squeezing out onto his hot dog."

  "The league allowed it?"

  "He's the biggest thing in baseball, Duluth."

  "Well ..."

  "The Cardinals may appeal the case up to the Commissioner's office. One story we read was that Steve Garland, the Mets trainer, was going to paint a blue shoe on Sidd's foot."

  The last caller I heard was from St. Louis. He asked, "Ed, remember the House of David teams-the guys with the long beards? They were good ballplayers and great entertainers. Sort of like the Harlem Globetrotters? They did these incredible fielding drills in which they whipped an invisible ball around the infield. Right?"

  "Yesss ..." the announcer said.

  "You couldn't believe they didn't have the ball-a great act."

  "And your point, St. Louis?"

  "That this guy, Finch, doesn't actually throw the ball. He palms it somehow."

  "Well, now ..."

  I clicked off the dial.

  Coming off the Triborough Bridge I suddenly had a clear image of what Sidd was doing to the game. It was what
the listeners were suggesting-he was changing the properties and the essence of the ball itself. It struck me how often the ball is inspected during a game, as if anyone who touches it has to make sure the ball has not changed its properties. If the ball disappears over the fence, another, like a youngster's dream pinball game, emerges from a black sack at the umpire's side. He looks at it and gives it to the catcher, who rubs it briefly, and after a glance fires it out to the pitcher; he looks at the ball and rubs it with both hands, his glove dangling from its wrist strap, and then, as he stares down at the catcher for the signal, his fingers manoeuver over its surface feeling for the comfort of some response-yes, this time it will do exactly as he wishes! Who has not seen a shortstop handling an easy ground ball-two big hops and there it is for him to look down into his glove and seem to read (National League, Chub Feeney, Rawlings, whatever) before plucking it out and zipping it across the diamond to the first baseman who, of course, in turn inspects it. If the last out of the inning, the first baseman lobs the ball nonchalantly to the first base umpire who cannot resist taking a peek too, just to be reassured, before he rolls it out to the mound where the opposing pitcher, emerging from his team's dugout, will stride up the slope of the mound to bend and pick it up for his inspection and then comfort his fingers with its texture.

  Football players do not have this kind of kinship with their ball. Most of the players don't even touch the thing during the course of a game. It sits stolidly on the grass. The center comes up over the ball from the huddle and barely giving it a glance turns it under his hands; his eyes are staring across the line of scrimmage at the unpleasant visage of the nose guard opposite. A defensive tackle is so uncomfortable with the ball that if he chances to pick it up on the practice-field he tends to throw it end over end to get rid of it.

  Basketball players do not look at the ball. They are taught not to. Look downcourt. Look at the rim of the basket. Look at the midriff of the defender. The thing planking off the wooden floor to the palm and back is simply a piece of luggage to be moved from here to here, and then tossed to another porter, so that he too can hurry it down the floor.