April Fools!

It's tough enough to deal with lost luggage and other travel hassles without Vinny nearly giving me a heart attack with his last post. Gary Sheffield an Indian? America's favorite clubhouse cancer and former friend of Barry? Say it ain't so!

Anyway, Vinny's 100% correct in identifying Sidd Finch as the greatest April 1st sports prank of all time. Here's a link to an online version of the original Sidd Finch article, and a tip of the hat to the greatest sportswriting Brahmin of them all, George Plimpton. David Halberstam was really Plimpton's only competitor for top Brahmin honors, but he forfeited any claim to that title when he published his Belichick hagiography, which we reviewed here.

While we're on the subject, here's a list of the top 100 April Fools hoaxes of all time. Sidd comes in at a very respectable #2.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, Cinderella bit the dust tonight. Assuming UCLA doesn't choke down the stretch, this sets up one of the least interesting NCAA finals matchups in recent memory. Upsets are what make the tournament interesting, but without a single number 1 seed in the Final Four, this year's tourney looks more like the World Baseball Classic than March Madness.

Does anybody seriously think that UCLA or Florida are among the top 5 teams in the country? Maybe that's the NCAA's April Fools Day joke on all of us. I'll give it 10 minutes on Monday night, and then I'm going to continue my quixotic quest to find Mannix reruns somewhere on cable.