shoe. Novelist Jonathan Dee, who was working as Plimpton's assistant at the time, described Plimpton at the time of the writing of the article as "a wreck". Dee wrote years later, "Nothing, he knew, falls quite so flat as a bad joke. Such was his anxiety that, for the one and only time in my five years in his employ, he asked me to come in to work on a Saturday. I still remember my naïve astonishment at the sight of a world-famous, successful writer actually agonizing over whether something he’d written was good enough, funny enough, believable enough, or whether the whole thing would wind up making him seem like a national jackass." Dee also talked about his role in the Finch hoax in an outtake from the 2012 documentary film Plimpton! Starring George Plimpton as Himself. Response The story was released in late March 1985. Mets fans were overjoyed at their luck in finding such a player, and flooded Sports Illustrated with requests for more information. Many people fell for the prank. A New York sports page editor complained to the Mets' public relations director for allowing Sports Illustrated to break the news. Two general managers called Commissioner of Baseball Peter Ueberroth asking about Finch. The St. Petersburg Times sent a reporter to find Finch, and a radio talk show host claimed he saw Finch pitch. The Mets gave Finch a locker between George Foster and Darryl Strawberry. The three major networks, CBS, NBC, and ABC, and the local St. Petersburg, Florida, newspapers sent reporters to Al Lang Stadium for a press conference about Finch. At the April 2 press conference, Berton announced his retirement. The subhead of the article read: "He's a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent life-style, Sidd's deciding about yoga—and his future in baseball." The first letters of these words spell out "Happy April Fools' Day—a(h) fib". Despite this clue and the obvious absurdity of the article, many people believed Finch actually existed. The magazine printed a much smaller article in the following April 8 issue announcing Finch's retirement. It then announced it was a hoax on April 15. Aftermath Plimpton eventually broadened his article into a novel, first published in 1987. The book discussed Finch's "brief re-commitment to baseball", in which stories of Sadaharu Oh and Steve Dalkowski, as well as Finch's girlfriend, inspire Finch to stick with