Orlando Magazine: Duped! The Mark Pulliam Story

Whew!...Good thing he didn’t talk about his etching experiences in the Vietnam War!

If a story sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The story we ran on Winter Garden artist Mark Pulliam in our August issue (“The Natural”) certainly sounded like a good one, but much of it wasn’t true.

Associate editor Jay Boyar’s profile of Pulliam described the artist as living a Zelig-like life, replete with celebrity encounters and a brief stint with the New York Yankees. Boyar’s story was based totally on Pulliam’s accounts and sources who knew him only as an artist or friend. Beyond verifying that he is a full-time artist, we did not independently corroborate many factual details in the story, a lapse in judgment that extends through the editing chain of command and ends with me.

After the story was published, a reader alerted us that he believed Mark Pulliam, 48, hadn’t played Major League Baseball. A baseball encyclopedia did not list Pulliam’s name, this reader wrote in an e-mail to me. I immediately called the Yankees and the colleges Pulliam claimed to have attended as a student athlete.

As the Pulliam story quickly unraveled, another person’s story emerged. Pulliam melded an embellished version of an aspiring baseball player’s short career into his own personal narrative. Confronted at his studio with the information that refuted his claims, Pulliam offered no firm rebuttals.

“I don’t know what to say,” Pulliam kept repeating as he stared down at the documents that contradicted his baseball claims. “I’ve bumped into this more than once, because . . .,” he said, his voice trailing off. He said little else.