Skip to content
Today’s a day when companies often come up with crazy stories that really have you going. Until they pull the chair out from under you with HAPPY APRIL FOOLS’ DAY! One time, Sports Illustrated got its readers really good. On April 1st, 1985, it published an entirely fictional story by George Plimpton about an entirely fictional New York Mets pitcher called “The Curious Case of Sidd Finch.” It was part believable (Plimpton wrote that Finch was raised in an English orphanage and learned yoga in Tibet) and part physically impossible (it stated that Finch could throw a fastball 168 MPH). You see, the fastest pitcher at the time was Nolan Ryan, and nobody came close to his 100.9 MPH. Still, everyone started talking about Finch like he was a slice of Rascal House pizza. Mets fans danced for joy and called Sports Illustrated for more information on their young star. Newspapers sent reporters out in search of the unknown phenom. General managers from opposing teams even contacted the commissioner’s office wondering how their batters could possibly face Sidd Finch without getting hurt.
Sports Illustrated never expected the story to spread like wild fire. Or as we like to put it, rise like a Rascal House Deluxe pizza – topped with aged pepperoni, sliced mushrooms, green peppers, red onion and mild Italian sausage on a bed of 100% pure provolone cheese. Plimpton even wrote a subhead to the article that revealed the ultimate message of the story, but it went unnoticed: “He’s a pitcher, part yogi and part recluse. Impressively liberated from our opulent lifestyle, Sidd’s deciding about yoga – and (his) future in baseball.” Everyone was too excited about the idea of a 168 MPH pitcher to discover the hidden message, ‘Happy April Fools Day – a fib.’ Sports Illustrated announced 2 weeks later that the story was a hoax.
Even though it’s April Fools’ Day, your impressionable young minds are safe with us. Under no circumstance is Rascal House going to take you to the land of make-believe by posting a fake story about us dropping pizza in favor of brussels sprouts. Sure, we’d be a different kind of brussels sprouts place. But we could never pull a prank of that magnitude on our customers. Only a deranged person, with warped taste buds and no respect for the time-honored commitment that goes into our pizza, would make our customers (who we love more than the Easter Bunny) fall for a trick like that. Shame on you, brussels sprouts, for even putting the idea in our head.
Share your April Fools’ photos with us on Twitter or Instagram using the hashtag #RascalHouse, or post on our Facebook page!
