Sports Hoaxes

On October 10, 1927, Dorothy Cochrane Logan entered the water at Cape Gris Nez, France. Her goal was to swim across the English Channel. Thirteen hours later she reappeared at Folkestone, England. Her time had set a new world record, for which a newspaper awarded her a prize of 1000 pounds. But a few days later Logan confessed her crossing had been a hoax. She had only spent four hours in the water. The rest of the time she had traveled on board a boat. She said that she perpetrated the hoax in order to demonstrate how simply the world could be fooled, and thus to underscore the necessity of supervising such swims. However, a member of her party, Lieutenant Commander L.S. M. Adam, later claimed she only confessed after he had demanded she do so. She was fined for perjury and returned the prize money. More…

Morris Newburger, a Wall Street stockbroker, phoned the sports desks of major New York City papers and reported a football score for a fictional New Jersey college team, the Plainfield Teachers. To his amusement, the score was faithfully recorded the next day in the papers, so he decided that Plainfield needed to complete its football season. For the next few weeks, he kept calling the papers, and scores for Plainfield kept appearing. The team was always victorious, crushing its opponents in lopsided wins. Newburger's deception was exposed within a month, but because of its gentle humor it's remembered as a classic sports hoax. More…

In 1956, runners bore the Olympic flame across Australia. When it was scheduled to arrive in Sydney, thousands lined the street to see it. Finally the runner appeared, bearing the flame aloft. With a police escort around him, the runner made his way to the Town Hall, bounded up the steps, and handed the torch to the waiting mayor who promptly turned to begin his prepared speech. Then someone whispered in the mayor's ear, "That's not the torch." It was a wooden chair leg topped by a plum pudding can inside of which a pair of kerosene-soaked underwear was burning with a greasy flame. Meanwhile, the runner had already disappeared into the crowd. More…

Rosie Ruiz was the first woman to cross the finish line in the 1980 Boston Marathon. However, she looked remarkably sweat-free and relaxed as she climbed the winner's podium, and race officials almost immediately began to question her victory. The problem was that no one could remember having seen her during the race. An investigation soon revealed that she had jumped into the race during its final half-mile and had then sprinted to the finish line. Officials stripped her of her victory and awarded the title to the real winner, Jackie Gareau. More…

Sports Illustrated revealed that the New York Mets’s were hiring a new rookie pitcher, Sidd Finch (short for Siddhartha Finch), who could throw a ball with startling, pinpoint accuracy at 168 mph. Sidd Finch had never played baseball before but had mastered the “art of the pitch” in a Tibetan monastery under the guidance of the “great poet-saint Lama Milaraspa.“ Mets fans celebrated their teams good luck and flooded Sports Illustrated with requests for more information. They were crestfallen to learn that Sidd Finch was nothing but an April Fool's Day hoax who sprang from the imagination of author George Plimpton. More…

During a game between the double-A Williamsport Bills and the Reading Phillies, everyone thought they saw catcher Dave Bresnahan throw the ball wild past third base. So how was it that when the man on third came running toward home, Bresnahan still had the ball and tagged him out? It was because Bresnahan had actually thrown a peeled potato into left field, and not a ball. The stunt cost Bresnahan his job with the Bills, but it also earned him an immortal place in baseball history. A year after the event, fans paid one dollar and one potato as admission to celebrate Dave Bresnahan Day. More…