It took Sidd Finch 40 years to get to a Mets home game.
A week after the anniversary of the Sidd Finch April Fool’s joke, retired middle school teacher Joe Berton (who played the role of the fireballing pitcher in the Sports Illustrated article) made his first trip to Citi Field to commemorate the occasion.
Berton, who lives in Oak Park, Ill., became a part of the famous George Plimpton story, “The Curious Case of Sidd Finch,” about the mysterious pitcher that could throw 168 mph and suddenly appeared in spring training for the Mets.
A friend of Sports Illustrated photographer Lane Stewart, Berton occasionally worked as an assistant for Stewart and the photographer called him prior to spring training in 1985 to see if he wanted to tag along for a story about a pitcher that pitched with one boot on and one boot off, played the French horn and had a Tibetan rug.
“I thought maybe the fastball may have been a little off,’’ Berton said. “But it sounded intriguing.”
That’s when he found out he would be Finch.
Berton said he helped come up with the idea to have his picture taken throwing at soda cans on the beach in St. Petersburg, Fla. where the Mets held spring training.
He worked with then-pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre about how to properly throw a pitch and developed his Juan Marichal-style windup, complete with high leg kick.
Media picked up the story — including in Chicago, where a news crew showed up to Berton’s school with a radar gun and he was unable to break 70 mph.
Since then, Berton said he’s gone to plenty of Mets games in Chicago, both Cubs and White Sox, but never made it to Queens until longtime media relations director Jay Horwitz arranged this visit.
