Did I fool any one yesterday, with my attempt at an April Fool's Day joke? If I didn't fool you, at least I tried. If I did fool you, I hope you had a good laugh out of it.With yesterday being April Fool's Day, I thought I would share what is, in my opinion, the greatest April Fool's Day joke of all time. It was pulled off by Sports Illustrated back on April 1st, 1985. In a cover article, writer George Plimpton, decided to use the fact that this particular issue would come out on April 1st to play a joke on all the readers of Sports Illustrated.
In the article, Plimpton introduced the world to a Major League Baseball rookie pitcher, in the Mets organization, named Sidd Finch. The article stated that Finch had never played baseball before, but was a natural. He was trying to decide on a career of either playing baseball or the french horn. He was able to throw a fastball 168 mph, far above the fastest speed ever recorded. And, he would only pitch wearing 1 shoe, a hiker boot.
This was such a great hoax. It had so many people fooled. Plimpton even left clues in the article to let people know this was a joke. If you took the first letter of each word in the first paragraph of the article, it spelled out H-a-p-p-y A-p-r-i-l F-o-o-l-s d-a-y. Sports Illustrated finally informed it's readers that this was just an April Fool's Day joke 2 weeks later. I am sure that all the Sports Illustrated readers had a nice chuckle.
4 comments:
PTI on ESPN had a good one yesterday. They said that Rick Pitino had secretly talked with Kentucky and is now the new coach. They went on and on about how wrong it was for him to do that to Calipari. They had me the whole time.
Yesterday, Expedia.com, a travel site, was offering a trip to Mars. They said it was normally $3,000,000,000, but because of an online discount, now it was only $99. Of course, when you went to sign up for it, they were sold out. Kind of a lame joke, but at least they were trying.
So I'm not the only adult who enjoys good, non-detructive, April Fool Pranks. Enjoyed the 1985 history as well as Expedia, and Rob's ESPN contribution. I have my own set of office pranks. My partner dared to be gone this week. She will find grass growing on her desk and a bird nesting on her computer.
I thought I was being April Fooled yesterday when Bob told me he read that my favorite soap opera was being canceled. The show is Guiding Light. I've watched it since I was a teen. It started on radio and has been running continuously for 70 years. I couldn't believe it. Then, I remembered it was April Fool. What a great one; I almost fell for it. Unfortunately, he wasn't joking. I was taken by a non-prank.
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