The Curious Case of Sidd Finch

by George Plimpton

  Jay Horwitz had given everybody a fact sheet about Sidd. It mentioned his education, his trips to the Himalayas, and that his skills could be attributed to the "Tibetan practice of lung-gom." Jay stood in front of a bank of microphones. His pale face looked out over the crowded club house. The lamps accompanying the television crews snapped on, the light so strong that, even in the sun streaming through the clubhouse windows, our shadows flickered in and out of the cubicles.

  Jay said, "Sidd Finch's here at Huggins, but he's very shy about appearing before the press at this time. He's throwing in the canvas enclosure some of you may have noticed at the north end of the complex. He'll be coming out to the playing field to throw a few pitches for you. Then tomorrow night, at Al Lang Field, Davey Johnson plans to pitch Finch for three innings in the B' squad Blue Jays game."

  Jay stepped aside and Davey Johnson took his place at the microphones. His voice seemed to have a slight edge to it; it occurred to me once again that the manager was disturbed that an element existed among his responsibilities that he could not quite fathom. "This guy's for real," he started off.

  A babble of questions rose.

  Johnson said, "You'll see for yourself out on the field. I don't know what more I can add...."

  Someone's persistence got him through with a question about fielding drills. "Does he go to sessions for the pitchers?"

  "He hasn't been required to do that," Johnson replied. "No. First of all, as you know, the guy didn't decide until yesterday whether to play baseball. He's only just signed a contract."

  "But aren't those drills important?" the reporter persisted.

  Johnson made an abrupt, impatient motion. "We do have sessions that deal with a pitcher's responsibilities on fielding plays, what to do in bunt situations, where he should go after a basehit. We review balk situations, cutoff assignments, things like that. To tell you the truth, I don't think-from what I've seen there in the canvas en closure-that any of these things are applicable in Sidd Finch's case. Baseball people talk about taking a thrower and turning him into a pitcher. No need here. Finch doesn't need to know anything about pitching. It's a good idea to rub up the ball so it isn't too slippery. We might teach him that, but nothing much more."

  "Davey, we hear the guy's here in camp for only a few minutes every day."

  "That's right. Doesn't even take a shower. He leaves the canvas enclosure and gets right in the training-camp car and is taken away to where he's been staying in Passa-Grille. The kid who drives the car-Finch can't drivetells us he doesn't sweat in there. Cool as a cucumber. He has never seen him mop his brow. He doesn't even stick to the seats."

  "He doesn't what?"

  "Stick to the seats ..."

  After a few more questions Davey Johnson was followed to the microphones by Mel Stottlemyre. He seemed much more at ease with the questions ... as if Finch was just another cipher in a long line of people he was training to maximum efficiency.

  "How fast is he, Mel?"

  "Quickest I ever saw ... ever dreamed of."

  "Is that figure in Sports Illustrated right? A hundred and sixty-eight?"

  "Damn close."

  Someone asked if anyone had figured out the key to Finch's ability.

  "We can tell what part of it is," the Mets coach said. "We've looked at films and slowed everything down. There are a number of things to notice ... an incredible cocked-wrist snap, for one. It's just a blur, even in the slo- mo footage. He has very long, supple wrists and fingers, but I'd guess the strength is terrific. Snap a chopstick be tween his fingers! Did you know that the crack of a whip is caused by the tip flicking so fast that it breaks the sound barrier ... what you hear is a little sonic boom? Well, that's what I've read anyway, and it's what I'm reminded of with that flick of Finch's wrist. It actually makes a sound, a kind of craack. You'll hear it."

  "What about the arm motion?" someone asked.

  "The wrist snap comes off the arm snap with the elbow leading exactly as it should, parallel to the ground; it's another blur in the tapes. It's a perfect motion. The body balance looks a little crazy, the foot way up there like the guy was trying to kick something over his head, but it makes a perfect fulcrum for his delivery. You're not going to find me fiddling too much with it," he added with a laugh. "You're not going to find me telling him he's rocking too far back on his hind foot, or anything like that."

  Mel Stottlemyre cleared his throat. "We're rather proud of what we've done with this kid. We taught Sidd how to throw the slider. Apparently they don't know how to throw the slider in Tibet or Nepal. The interesting thing about Sidd's slider is that it's going so fast you can't tell whether or not it is a slider. The thing just-bam-arrives in Ronn Reynolds' glove. For all I know the pitch could have gone out over the alligator pond and back." He laughed and slipped a sunflower seed between his lips.

  "How about the change-up?" someone else asked.

  Stottlemyre shrugged and said that the normal change-up takes about fifteen percent off the pace of the ball. "That would put Sidd's change-up down in the hundred-and-thirty-miles-per-hour range where a fastball hitter might be able to put his bat on it. We didn't reckon there was much sense in that, though Ronn Reynolds"a wry smile crossed the coach's face-"put up a strong case for nothing but change-ups. If you're going to ask me if we taught him how to throw a knuckleball, the answer is no. Since pitchers have no idea where a knuckleball is going, there wouldn't be a catcher in camp who wouldn't head for the hills."

  Ronn Reynolds stepped up. In uniform, he was carrying his mask and catcher's mitt. He had just a few minutes before heading for the enclosure.

  He was asked, "Do you have a special stance, Ronn?"

  "I have to keep my arm crooked a bit," he said, "so that when the ball smacks in there, it'll give. If I kept my arm straight and stiff, I could lose a damn shoulder."

  "It's that violent a blow, Ronn?"

  He nodded. "It's a concussion."

  "Where do you pick up the ball after it's left that guy's fingertips?"

  Reynolds thought for a second or so. "Maybe ten feet from the plate. There's no time to do anything. A good fastball you can pick up pretty quick-maybe thirty, forty feet out. But not this thing."

  Someone asked, "Ronn, does his fastball rise?"

  Reynolds smirked. "I can't tell you. It's going too fast."

  "Does it make a sound?"

  Ronn Reynolds thought about it. "Well, it doesn't. Maybe a little pft. A real good fastball will make a sound like ripping silk. But not Finch's. It just arrives. Or to put it another way, suddenly it's there. Pft-boom!"

  "What's that again?"

  "Pft-boom!"

  When Reynolds was done Jay Horwitz once again stepped to the microphones and from the back of the room I suddenly heard my name mentioned.

  "We're glad to have Robert Temple here," Jay was saying. "Sidd Finch is staying in his house in Pass-a-Grille. Bob is perhaps his best friend. We've asked him-since Sidd himself is apparently somewhat reticent about press conferences-to try to answer a few questions about Sidd's background. Afterwards, we'll go out to the field and see the guy himself."

  Heads turned as I walked up toward the microphones. I must have made a somewhat odd impression. It could hardly have added to the portentousness of the occasion that I was wearing Debbie Sue's Mickey Mouse T-shirt. When I got to the podium I could see that a few of the press sitting down there in front recognized me-if not by sight, by name. I could see my name being mouthed as one of them would lean over to another: "Isn't that the guy ... ?„

  Some floodlights went on. First they wanted to know why Sidd would not speak for himself.

  "He's shy."

  The pencils worked busily.

  "What's his problem?"

  I had thought about it myself long enough to answer, "I think it's a problem of collision of cultures. He is, after all, an Englishman. He's also studying to be a Buddhist monk. And now he's a pitcher. It's a strain to be any one of these three."

 
I said all this haltingly, and without humor. "Bob," someone called out, looking down at the press release, "what is this lung-gom?"

  I was immediately seized by a violent coughing fit. I am inexperienced in standing before microphones, in particular an amplifying system, so the sound of my temporary misery, before I turned my head away, was magnified to a verifiable typhoon in the clubhouse.

  "Essentially," I was finally able to say, "it's a kind of mind-over-matter state that controls the physical. I am not an expert in these matters."

  "Where'd he learn this stuff?"

  "He told me he studied lung-gom at a place whose name means `The Happy Cave' in the Upper Nyang Valley."

  "Hold it! Hold it!" I was asked to spell the name of the place and "lung-gom" for someone who didn't have Jay's press sheet.

  "There are all sorts of rituals about this place," I said. "One of them is that the monks wishing to attain lunggom enter a meditation cubicle, and when they emerge a long time later it is almost as if they have shed a personality and have been born again. Sidd told me he spent a long time in one of these cells. It sounds like a place of torture or punishment. Actually it's simply a rather practical place to think, freed from life ... with a view of the sky through a hole in the roof. I believe he had some things in there with him connected with daily rituals-a book, a bell, butter lamps, a couple of pans. Sidd told me he was sealed up in there for about a year."

  "Sealed up?"

  "The length of time really depends on the will of the monk himself. The shortest periods range from one to three months. The middle-range monks stay in there three or four years, and when Sidd Finch was there a hermit was in his fourth year and intended to stay in there for six!"

  Some of the pencils had stopped working. A number of the reporters were staring at me. They looked like students being given an exam in a course they had not signed up for. I went on, "The only entrance to the meditation cell is closed up. No one is allowed to speak to the lunggom-pa. In fact, they can't even see him. When Sidd reached through this little opening for his supplies, he covered his hands with a sock or a cloth bag.

  "You might be interested to know that Sidd told me that he wasn't allowed to heat up his tea pot with yak dung, which is the most commonly used fuel in those mountain areas. Why? Because yak dung might contain beetles and a worm or two-animals that would be con turned, but when I set it upright I looked in it to find it empty.

  The phone rang off in the depths of the bungalow. It was Jay Horwitz.

  "I have a letter here from Sidd," he said. "He wrote it out in your house. It was delivered here by the driver."

  "Sidd wasn't with him?"

  "No."

  "Nor the girl?"

  "No sign of her. Elliot dropped Sidd off at a taxi stand. He had his belongings with him. His French horn case. Elliot has no idea where he ordered the taxi driver to go."

  He read me the letter. As he did so I could almost imagine the curlicues and flourishes of Sidd's curiously antique penmanship:

  Dear Mr. Doubleday:

  First, I wish to express my gratitude to the management of the New York Mets. The office in the front has treated my requests for solitude and secrecy with respect. I am especially thankful to the coaches, above all Mr. Stottlemyre, who showed me the art of the slider, a phenomenon unknown in my former place of habitation in the foothills of the Himalayas. Next, my appreciation to Ronn Reynolds, who was usually designated to receive The Perfect Pitch during my month of tryout. His swollen left hand attests to his fortitude, and I apologise if this has caused him to be less valuable to your ball club.

  Now to the matter at hand. The concentration which is a major part of my ability to throw a ball with great velocity and to a specific point, namely the pocket of Ronn Reynolds' catcher's mitt wherever he places it as a target, is not as intense as it was when I first arrived. Today, April i, I threw two balls which went wide of Mr. Reynolds. One hit a pipe. The other tore a hole in the backstop. I have come to realise that The Perfect Pitch, once a thing of Harmony, is now potentially an instrument of Chaos and Cruelty. As we might say in the foothills of the Himalayas, "The horsehide has developed cloven hooves."

  There are other reasons as well, which are personal and thus cannot be resolved by the management of the Mets. Alas, I had looked forward to a summer in New York (that is if I had been fortunate enough to make the team) and to travel to such places as Pittsburgh.

  There might be conditions which would change the situation, but these would be personal considerations. There is a Zen hoan which is applicable. It is, "What do you say to one who has nothing to carry about?" The response is, "Carry it along." My good friend, Robert Temple, will be cognisant of any further developments.

  I see no point in suggesting what these might be, since I have no idea myself.

  Very best wishes,

  Sidd Finch

  Jay asked, "What is all that? What does it mean'nothing to carry about'? "

  "I really don't know," I said truthfully. "It's one of those koans. It's got a bit of that Finch flavor, doesn't it?"

  "Did you know he was quitting?"

  "No," I said. "Last night I thought he was solid with the idea of being a baseball pitcher."

  Jay asked if I thought the article in Sports Illustrated had anything to do with it.

  "I don't think so," I said. "He knew that the news about him was bound to break out. I believe he was rather amused."

  "Do you think they left together?"

  I told Jay that I suspected so.

  "Everyone around here thinks the girl is responsible," Jay said. "You don't suppose she's from the Minnesota Twins ... psyching him out just enough to get him off the premises so they can sign him?"

  "I doubt it. He was very appreciative of the way the Mets have behaved toward him."

  sumed in the fire under the kettle. That's not something anyone wants to do who is trying to generate love and compassion for all living things. So the stuff Sidd used is a kind of giant, hardened moss that apparently doesn't have any animal life hidden in it."

  Suddenly I noticed Jay motioning to me from the side of the room-frantically, as if the urgency of what he had to say preempted everything else. Jay hurried me outside.

  "Christ, that was awful," I said. "I've never been so embarrassed. They must think I'm crazy ... yak dung!"

  "That's nothing compared to what's happened out here." Jay looked ashen.

  "What's wrong?"

  "A terrible thing's happened out there in the enclosure," Jay whispered to me. "Sidd's lost his control. He threw a ball through the backstop. Ronn Reynolds! Poor guy's been damn near traumatized."

  "Where's Sidd?"

  Jay said that he had disappeared. "Right after this he ran out of the enclosure for the car, jumped in, and Elliot Posner drove him away."

  "God Almighty." I asked Jay how many pitches Sidd had thrown.

  "I hear just two. The first one hit an iron pipe of the structure that holds up the canvas. High behind Reynolds. Terrible sound. Went out the top of the enclosure and landed in the pond. The second one was the one that went through the backstop. When Reynolds heard the rip of the ball going through, he hustled out of the enclosure. No more for him!"

  "One can hardly blame him," I said.

  The reporters were beginning to complain. I could hear their voices drifting out through the clubhouse windows. One or two came out on the field. They held their notebooks folded back. They wanted to know what the hell was going on. Where was this guy they'd been hearing so much about? The Kathmandu Fireballer? Was this all some kind of a joke?

  Jay went in to see if he could restore order. He asked me to go with him. I stood off to one side. Most of the people in the clubhouse were standing up and yelling at him. "Come on, Jay. Give us a break. Where is this guy?"

  Jay stood in front of the microphones. In the sudden glare of portable sunguns clicked on by the television people, his huge shadow wavered on the wall behind him.

  "Finch
has gone home," he said simply. "There's nothing more that I can say at this time."

  The mood in the clubhouse became rather unpleasant. "Whaddya mean? You gotta be kidding! April Fool's joke," I heard one of the reporters mutter. Another came by and said pointedly at me, "Lung-gom, my ass." I think it was Dick Young of the New York Post. The television crews made a point of slamming down the lids of their equipment trunks. There was no sign of either Davey Johnson or Mel Stottlemyre.

  "What do you think happened?" Jay asked me.

  "I don't know," I said. "Sidd once told me the whole process was quite fragile. Something must have snapped."

  I drove to the bungalow. I expected to find Sidd. He had left Huggins Field only a half hour or so before. I called out his name. Hers. The place was deserted. Both had packed and gone. I looked around their room. I remembered Sidd had left a koan on the floor for his Harvard roommate when he left there. I peered around for one. The place was spotless. Some of the stuffed animals from Disney World were set in a row along the wall. Their bed was made. Just the faintest summery tang of Debbie Sue's suntan oil. A straw wastepaper basket was over-

  "You think he'll come back?"

  "I don't know. I'm sorry I couldn't do better for you."

  "Damn shame," Jay said. "What was it we were all saying ... that he could ..."

  " `Change the face of the future,' " I prompted him. "Maybe it's better this way," I went on. "I think it worried him."

  "Well, maybe we'll never know," Jay said. "It's almost as if it had never happened."

  Almost as soon as I finished talking to Jay, the phone rang again. Debbie Sue's voice, troubled, obviously, was on the other end.

  "Where are you?" I asked.

  "I'm looking for Sidd."

  "I thought you were with Sidd somewhere."

  "No," she said mournfully. "I've made a bad mistake."

  "He's not here, Debbie Sue," I said. "Huggins is in an uproar. I had a bad time this morning. I got talking to the reporters about yak dung."

  "Poor Owl. With your Mickey Mouse shirt. Did he say where he was going?"