| Title | : | The Curious Case of Sidd Finch |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 156858296X |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781568582962 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 296 |
| Publication | : | First published January 1, 1987 |
| Awards | : | Casey Award (1987) |
The Curious Case of Sidd Finch Reviews
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At a time when I followed sports & especially baseball a bit more thoroughly, I remember the famous article detailing the mysterious Sidd Finch in Sports-Illustrated 35 years ago, the April Fool's Day cover story as it turned out. When the novel appeared somewhat later, expanding the story & by the publishing company I worked for, I got a copy. It has lingered unread on a shelf with other baseball books I'd read ever since. But a global pandemic can cause one to look backward, turning to books long postponed from being read & such was the case with George Plimpton's The Curious Case of Sidd Finch.
For starters, Hayden Sydney-White Finch was an orphan, adopted by a wealthy British family, with his father a rather well-regarded anthropologist dying in a plane crash in Nepal where he'd been doing research & his mother in a freak accident in the same country.
What I'd forgotten is the context for how Plimpton in expanding the magazine story into a novel embedded the story of Sidd Finch within that of the man who narrates the tale, Robert Temple, a stand-in for the author, who in the book is suffering from Post Traumatic Shock, following many helicopter missions, referred to as "joy-pops", during his time in Vietnam. Mr. Temple is in the midst of a long period of convalescence, spending a great deal of time exploring his consciousness, said to be time "between the dog & the wolf", also seen as "a master plan of idleness, a cocoon of darkness."
At this point, who should appear in his life but Sidd Finch, having fled a brief stint at Harvard following graduation from his elite British boarding school, also seemingly in a kind of limbo after his father's death, when he had spent time in Nepal, Bhutan & Tibet, living as a disciple of the great 11th century Buddhist poet-saint Lama Milarepa, "learning to achieve a parallelism of thought & movement, an astonishing rhythm that gathers a tremendous amount of cosmic force."
While living at Harvard & living in Cambridge, Sidd attended a baseball game at Fenway Park & he has come to view a baseball diamond as a modified mandala. It seems that with meditation, concentration & contemplation of mind & soul on a certain objective, Sidd has learned to throw a baseball 165 MPH with absolute accuracy at a target, breathing to produce inner heat & clear lungs while inhaling 5 wisdoms. Oh, and Sidd is a master of the French Horn & wears only one boot when pitching, with the other foot bare. Are you still with me on all of this...?
Yes, one must suspend disbelief to keep score in the midst of George Plimpton's baseball fable, much as we were asked to do by Bernard Malamud in The Natural, though perhaps to a lesser degree than is necessary with the story of Roy Hobbs. But alas, "baseball is the perfect game for the mystical mind, a game that can go on indefinitely, with no clocks & foul lines that stretch to infinity." And how did Sidd Finch initially master his accuracy with a baseball? He did it by tossing stones at snow leopards in Nepal in an effort to protect yaks from being preyed upon.
Remembering that Roy Hobbs fashioned his own special bat, Wonderboy from a tree struck by lightning, I suggest that almost anything is possible when you suspend disbelief & so, why not Sidd Finch? After all, I recall attending a White Sox Game vs. the Detroit Tigers where the remarkable Mark Fidrych would pace about the pitching mound and speak to the baseball he was about to toss in an attempt to motivate both himself & the ball prior to hurling it.
Quite naturally, Sidd Finch (with his surname oddly enough being an old English word for lie or fib) becomes a secret weapon for the New York Mets who sign him but have difficulty maintaining his full attention, particularly after he pitches a perfect game in his first outing & the league president & other forces worry about retaining competitive balance in the face of such a seemingly mechanical, unhittable force.
That said, Sidd has no inkling about other aspects of the game, including hitting, running the bases, the ritual hazing that befalls new players and the routine practice of being ignored by his fellow teammates as he approaches a no-hitter (not wishing to jinx their pitcher). Also, Finch can't drive a car or toss a Frisbee or perform other fairly routine functions in life.
What is interesting about the novel is that Plimpton uses real names, including that of Chub Feeney (National League President at the time), players on the Mets of the mid-1980s, Nelson Doubleday (whose family association with baseball goes back to its founding) & Mike Marshall, a former player who went on to get a PhD in physiological psychology & who intones within the novel about muscle structure & everything necessary to toss a baseball at great speed while retaining accuracy. All of these associations add something concrete to the story of Sidd Finch, who is soon referred to as "Shoeless Sidd", "the Yeti" & the "Kathmandu fireballer". For...Sidd was changing the properties & essences of the ball & the game itself. It struck me how often a ball is inspected during a game, with a pitcher comforting his fingers with the texture of the ball. Football players do not have this kinship with their ball & most of the players never even touch it during the course of the game. Neither do basketball players look at the ball rather than at the rim of the basket. Tennis players are taught to keep their eye on the ball but have no particularly affection for it. But Sidd has done something to the ball of baseball & somehow removed it from its familiar associations.
Beyond his seeming aloofness from the game, Finch does have a sort of hippie girlfriend, Debbie-Sue, who walked ashore one day while surfing when Sidd & the narrator, Robert Temple, were in Florida where the Mets conduct spring training. Sidd participates in tantric sexual calisthenics with Debbie-Sue & is questioned about just how this fits with his interest in Buddhism. The book did fall into some disarray with highly implausible events late in the novel, including when a Mafia hit-man is introduced because Sidd Finch's heroics with a baseball somehow cut into national betting odds.
Curiously, I write this review just as Hall-of-Fame pitcher Tom Seaver passed away at 75, a man known as "Tom Terrific" and "The Franchise". I attended Seaver's 300th victory at Yankee Stadium when Seaver pitched not for the Mets but for the Chicago White Sox, with Carleton Fisk as his catcher. He seemed to have every possible positive component in life--talent, good looks, emotional stability, wonderful family and even his own vineyard in California but was laid low by a combination of early-onset dementia & the coronavirus. In the face of such news, why not envision a kind of paranormal pitcher but one with the all-around persona of Tom Seaver, even though he couldn't quite toss a baseball 160+ MPH!
Tom Seaver & the improbable, fictional Sidd Finch were both Mets. As the French-American scholar & author, the late Jacques Barzun once put it: Anyone who wants to know the heart & mind of America, had better learn baseball. George Plimpton's novel The Curious Case of Sidd Finch is perhaps not in a class with Malamud's baseball tale but if one enjoys the game of baseball & a good but somewhat farfetched yarn, George Plimpton's book is quite worth reading.
*The 1st photo image is of the author; the 2nd is of the man who posed as Sidd Finch for the novel's cover; the 3rd image is of the late Tom Seaver during his tenure with the Mets. -
I confess, I read the magazine story, originally written on April 1, 1985,from which this book was expanded. It was only when I mentioned it to my son, who is a walking baseball "almanac", that I discovered it was a hoax. I hope that I have not spoiled the tale for anyone, but I did find it entertaining and unusual. I have seen it described as humorous, but it did not appear that way to me, but amusing at times. I am quite interested in baseball, so it was not difficult for me to picture the maneuvers discussed. Although this was written thirty-five years ago, the names of popular baseball figures played prominent roles in the narrative. I'm looking forward to discussing this with my short story book group and hearing their reactions.
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Originally an April Fool’s Day Hoax article written by Plimpton and published by Sports Illustrated with the aid of the New York Mets, after seeing the public’s response George Plimpton turned it into a novel.
As a lover of baseball I fell in love with this novel, and the character of Sidd Finch. Throughout this book it discusses the effect that such a talent would have on the game of baseball, and then it shows us. I think that discussion is a fitting comparison for what the steroids era has done to baseball. The only difference is that Sidd Finch had a purity and honesty too him. He had respect. These are things that few players today seem to have. They are greedy, look out for #1, steroid juiced, behemoths. I’d rather read this book than watch a ball game today. I recommend this book to those who are still in love, or want to be in love, with the game of baseball. -
A real charmer - quirky, clever and very interesting!
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A novel released in 1987 that expanded on an April Fools article from 1985, this baseball novel works in more than a few real-life athletes, performers and writers - including the author. Light summer reading, this holds up well.
I did not read the original article, and was not a particular fan of the Mets when this book came out. Several Mets appear in the narrative of course, and the story closes with a hint that the Mets might make it to the World Series in 1986. Since this coda was written in late '86 or early '87, it's not exactly divination...
Told mostly from the perspective of a writer, the characters are kind of flat. The situations are interesting, though, with a hint of mystery and, at the close of the book, a chapter of crime action. I read this over a hot weekend, and it was worth the time spent. -
One of the first books I ever read as a kid was "Paper Lion" by George Plimpton. I really enjoyed that book. I also love baseball, so I thought this book was a natural for me. Nope.
This book mixed in real coaches and players from the New York Mets from the mid-1980's with the fictional character of Sidd Finch. Sidd raised his head with me on April 1, 1985 when Roger Temple wrote an article in Sports Illustrated about a Buddhist monk who the Mets discovered who could throw the baseball 168 mph with complete control. I remember how shocking it was to hear about Sidd. Even the fastest MLB pitchers only through 105 mph at the most. Turns out it was an April Fool's joke. The first letter of the first words of the article spelled out "April Fools".
This book was a 275 page extension of the article. However, like stuffing yourself with candy makes you sick, stuffing your reading with all of this fantasy fictional crap made me sick too. A little Sid is good. This much Sidd is bad. -
I loved it. Robert temple, the writer in the story was personally washed in baseball and life nostalgia, and sidd finch was a nuke lalouche of otherworldly talent and the whole thing was wrapped up in a layer of sensitivity and joy that was just the best. It was quietly funny which made it an extremely well pitched book- not going for too much but having fun the whole time. Super.
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Some backstory: many years ago (2015?), I was in the West End of downtown Greenville when I came across a bookstore/wine place that sold used books and wine (well, not "used wine," but you get my drift). I came across two books that I decided to buy among the myriad selection of good-but-not-must-have titles. This, "The Curious Case of Sidd Finch," and Tom Seaver's book about the game he pitched in the 1969 World Series (co-authored by Dick Schaap) were the only two purchases I made that day, or ever again, at this particular store. I honestly can't recall if I ever went back there (even in the days of my car being reliable, Greenville was a "once every other month" kind of a trip, especially for some hard-to-find bookstore which may or may not have lasted long after my visit), but I read the Seaver book first, enjoyed it (but not enough to keep it for too long; I think I eventually put it in a pile of donations either to a thrift store or a used-book store), and then this one sat on my shelf for a long, long time.
I'm a big believer in "books find you when you're ready for them," and as it turns out I was finally ready to dip into George Plimpton's one novel, about a mysterious figure who throws a fastball far faster than anything ever recorded in baseball history. Sidd Finch is, as the title suggests, a curious case: an English orphan adopted by a wealthy explorer, whose journey to Tibet to search for his adoptive father's remains leads him to a Buddhist monastery where he devotes his life to studying meditation and developing the most stunning delivery in sports history. Through the narrator, Robert Temple, we get Sidd's incredible story, with wit and charm (though not "laugh out loud funny" as the copy on the flap jacket would have you believe). Can the lowly Mets, a year away from their 1986 World Series triumph, hold onto a good thing in Finch, or will success spoil the Buddhist monk/pitcher?
I have to admit, for the first half or so of the book, I wasn't sure that I was on board with this one. Plimpton is one of my all-time favorite non-fiction writers, and I think his sports books are essential reading. But I had my doubts about his ability to sustain a novel. Great literature this ain't, let's be clear; but for what it is, it works more than it doesn't. Plimpton's prose style mostly works for this whimsical tale, and it's one of those books that gets over more on the assurances of the authorial voice than the story, which is okay for the most part. It comes together as Finch gets closer to starting in the majors, and the Mets realize what they have in this bizarre character who can throw faster than any human being alive. I was considering donating my copy of this book after finishing it, but when I got done with it, I decided that I'd like to keep it on my shelves a while longer (it might go well with the other couple of Mets-related books that I own. Perhaps I've been a closet Mets fan all this time? Perish the thought). At any rate, I don't know that I'd call this a *great* novel, but it's good, fun, and holds up very well.
Sidd Finch may not be the greatest pitcher alive, but he is certainly the oddest. And in recounting his story, George Plimpton has gifted the world with something that is its own odd duck in terms of literature about America's national pastime. -
Well, alas, it was as I feared. The hype about the book was more than the book could deliver.
The foreword by Jonathan Ames was delightful, and I especially appreciated that the publishers decided to include the original Sports Illustrated article at the end.
The book itself, however, fails in several ways. The most glaring of all is the lack of veracity regarding the game of baseball -- particularly, the "perfect" game of baseball. A perfect game, as any good fan knows, involves the pitcher facing the minimum of batters. But it also involves none of those batters reaching base, whether through error or a hit-by-pitch, etc. (For example, if you've faced the minimum 24 batters through 8 innings, then hit the leadoff hitter in the ninth inning, only to get the next batter to ground into a double-play, you no longer are in the running for a perfect game. You're simply one out away from pitching a no-hitter and a _nearly_ perfect game.)
The main character, Sidd Finch, is enjoyable in the same way Alyosha is enjoyable to read about in The Brothers Karamazov. He is, in some ways, a minor god walking among men. And his reactions to certain "humanly" things is hilarious.
But ... the narrator and the female lead character are lacking. The bulk of the baseball players get glommed together as one unit. And the amount of baseball actually discussed in the book is seriously lacking. True, in the movie "Run Lola Run" the main character is actually only running for a few minutes total. Happily, the slower parts of that movie still move events forward. The slower parts of this book seem to idle, and as a reader, idling is OK if you're reading (and skipping ahead in) Tolkien. But for a more modern book, a reader like me hopes for more of interest to occur.
Ultimately, I would recommend this book for true baseball aficionados (with the caveat about the "perfect" game misnomer). Otherwise, I think the SI article sufficed, and a longer book didn't need to be fleshed out from this gem. To go the wrong direction with a metaphor: Some gems just look better uncut. -
George Plimpton got me. It was April Fools' morning, 1985 - listening to Boston DJ Charles Laquidara's "The Big Mattress" on WBCN, as I was shaving, getting ready for another mundane day at a very boring job. Charles started speaking right after a song, exalting my team, The New York Mets and how they just pulled off a coup, signing a reclusive, Tibetan Monk who threw a 168 M.P.H. fastball! This was on the heels of a 90 win season and days away from Gary Carter starting at Catcher, following his trade from The Expos - an embarrassment of riches. The elaborate hoax, was the result of Plimpton's feature article in Sports Illustrated; SI and Plimpton let it run its course for two weeks, finally acknowledging what they had pulled off.
The ruse was so elaborate, in fact, that the sub-heading of the article 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." The first letters of these words spell out "Happy April Fools Day - ah(a) fib". The positive reaction prompted Plimpton to write this book, which was released two years later in 1987.
Far from a literary masterpiece, baseball fans, nevertheless, will enjoy this read. It is a quirky, funny novel that allows the reader's imagination to participate. Being a life-long Mets' fan, and given the resultant roller-coaster ride it has taken me on for fifty years, I have grown accustomed to the odd, the strange and the unexpected - on that score, Plimpton doesn't disappoint.
On the advent of both the 2013 baseball season and April Fools (on which day the Mets begin this season), you may enjoy dusting off this very funny book. -
Excellent summer reading!
Sure, the plot kind of meandered, but I found The Curious Case of Sidd Finch to be a completely charming book.
I thoroughly enjoyed the main characters of Sidd, Debbie Sue, and Owl and thought the whimsy that infused the novel was just delightful. I also appreciated that Plimpton did research on his whimsy - many of the people mentioned in the novel, such as the horn player Dennis Brain and minor league pitcher Steve Dalkowski, were real people, which I got a kick out of. Also, apparently Lung-gom is also a real thing in Tibetan lore, so kudos to Plimpton for doing his homework there too.
The whole book just made me smile. Glad I read it. -
Look if you are looking for some literary masterpiece, look elsewhere. If you are looking for a good summer read, then you might find one here. The book centers on Sidd Finch, a Buddhist Monk, who comes to America to try to play baseball. He has a fastball that is unlike any other in history, and the quarkiness of the leftiest of leftys. I recommend it because it is fun. Highly improbable, especially in this day in age where everyone is a reporter and has a blog and a cell phone, but enjoyable still.
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It's a fun book. I was fairly obsessed with George Plimpton's Sports Illustrated story on the fictitious Finch back in 1985, and Plimpton does a commendable job of building a novel around the Buddhist monk Mets pitcher. At times his imagination goes too far, as when the gangster Al 'Big Cakes' Caporetto breaks into Finch's apartment, aiming to prevent him from pitching out of his love for the Cardinals, and when Plimpton has Finch take the mound in the regular season, and hurl a pair of perfect games, with every out a strikeout.
But it's a highly entertaining yarn nonetheless. -
Very interesting read. Fact blended with fiction. I really don't even know how to review it. I enjoyed it thoroughly, literally laughing out loud at some parts, but also quickly skimming other parts that got just too in depth. I really want to pick up a copy of the original Sports Illustrated article and read that. Very enjoyable for any sports fan I'd say, and it didn't hurt for me that it was based around the Mets!
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Finding this book in a box outside a Brooklyn library, left by someone who clearly from the contents were shedding their collection, one would suspect the box was full of sports books or maybe whimsical fiction and non-fiction. No. The box was a melange of Lost Generation, Beats, Punk and... Buddhist and Daoist tracts. That last genre is where this book comes in.
Though I am a Yankees fan, I always enjoy any reference to Mookie Wilson, so I enjoyed it. -
I gave this book multiple chances. Unfortunately, I couldn't get through it. The characters aren't all that compelling. The narrator has a dreary, almost personally-less presence. Sidd, who is featured on the title, is seen in almost passing glances. And the plot line is plodding. You are sort of left wondering if anything interesting is ever going to happen. It's hard to cheer anyone on. And I can't really see a reason why to recommend this book.
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Every single character was quirky in a way that made them insufferable and unbelievable, yet the baseball theme kept me in the story of a lost English monk with one hell of an arm.
Unless you are a baseball fan, I can't imagine this is worth reading. Its incredibly dry humor will only be a hit if you have an interest in America's pastime, and what a pitcher who could throw 168mph would do to the game. -
Even though I'm not a huge baseball fan, I loved this book! George Plimpton does so much with the ideas of Buddhism, baseball, post-traumatic stress disorder...and it's all laugh-out-loud-in-the-library funny.
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Perhaps my all-time fave baseball book. About a Buddhist monk pitching for the '85 Mets who learned to throw ~150 mph fastballs by tossing rocks at yaks.
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I didn't read this book but I did read the article and was taken in completely. The first letters of the beginning words of the story spelled out April Fools. Date is approximate.
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Sigh, back when I wasn't emabarrassed to be a Mets fan...
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Plimpton wrote this so well that his Sports Illustrated excerpt article had many people believing Finch was a real person.
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Another book picked up on my first trip to the USA. A wonderful read and although already a baseball fan this helped cement my love of the sport.
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I don't like sports. I don't read sports books. Unless they're written by George Plimpton.
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I saw this book on the shelf at a local thrift shop. The memories flowed back to me immediately. I had read the SI article on Sidd Finch when it was published on April Fools Day back in, as it turns out, 1985. This book is the rest of the Sidd Finch story. What a story it is! Books are meant to be enjoyed, and this book succeeds. Thank you George Plimpton.
