SIDD FINCH makes his pitch (Sports Illustrated).

After seeing “Damn Yankees” at the Gem Theater in Garden Grove on Sunday, I’m reminded of how much sports inspires entertainment, everything since from Abbott and Costello’s famous “Who’s On First” routine to “Jerry Maguire” and “Remember the Titans.”

But we are given to understand that those are made-up tales. From time to time, though, made-up sports tales are passed-off as the real stuff, illustrating both how much we love athletics and how “we’ll believe anything.”

Pretty much forgotten but arguably the greatest sports hoax of all time involved the Plainfield Teachers College football team.

In 1941, the gridiron world was intrigued by the winning streak of this plucky New Jersey small college team which won seven straight games, the last three by a combined score of 85-0.

The invention of a stockbroker and a sports writer, the “result” of these games were phoned – with a straight face – into the wire services and major papers – including The New York Times.

They also concocted their own All-American candidate in Johnny “The Celestial Comet” Chung, who ate rice at halftime to boost his energy.

Eventually the hoax was exposed, but it demonstrated that journalists love a good story, true or not.
Baseball’s biggest hoax was an April 1, 1985 “feature” in Sports Illustrated on Mets phenom Sidd Finch who – using Eastern mysticism – could throw a fast ball 168 miles an hour.

For a while the story in a prestigious national magazine was taken at face value, but there were some clues to the watchful. None of the photos in the article showed Finch’s face, and there was a humorous acronym imbedded into the article’s first sentence.

On the other hand, if I heard the Angels had a pitcher that homeric, I’d want to believe it, too.