He took Sidd Finch 40 years to reach a game at the Mets house.
A week after the anniversary of the Sidd Finch April Fool’s Fool joke, the retired Master of the Joe Berton high school (who played the role of the firbaling pitcher in the Sports Illustrated article) made his first trip to Citi Field to commemorate the occasion.
Berton, who lives in Oak Park, Illinois, became part of the famous story of George Plimpton, “the curious case of Sidd Finch”, about the mysterious pitcher who could launch 168 MPH and suddenly appeared in the spring training for the Mets.
A friend of Sports Illustrated Lane Stewart photographer, Berton, occasionally worked as an assistant for Stewart and the photographer called before spring training in 1985 to see if he wanted to assign a story about a pitcher who launched the launched and one and played the launched … back.
“I thought maybe the fast ball could have a slightly off leg,” Berton said. “But it sounded intriguing.”
It was then that he founded that it would be Finch.
Berton said he helped to think about the idea that his image tasks were launched in the cans of soft drinks on the beach in St. Petersburg, Fla. Where the Mets celebrated spring training.
He worked with the then launch coach Mel Stottlemyre on how to launch a launch and developed his Juan Marichal style Windup, complete with a high leg kick.
The media collected the story, even in Chicago, where a news team appeared in Berton’s school with a radar gun and could not break 70 mph.
Since then, Berton said he has gone to many Mets games in Chicago, both puppies and white stockings, but never reached Queens until the director of media relations Jay Horwitz organized this visit.
