This isn’t a story you will hear on a tour of Cooperstown or in any of a hidebound sport’s official histories. That he did it while tripping balls almost beggars belief. That alone would secure his place in baseball lore. For context: it is one of only 303 no-hitters out of the more than 210,000 games played in major league history since 1876. Somehow, after fanning Ed Spiezio on a curveball in the bottom of the ninth, Ellis completed his long, strange trip without surrendering a single hit in a 2-0 victory. “And once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate.” But consider the circumstances: “I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire,” he recounted years later to the New York Times.
Ellis recorded more walks (eight) than strikeouts (six), hit another batsman, allowed three stolen bases, and was bailed out by highlight-reel plays in the field by second baseman Bill Mazeroski and centerfielder Matty Alou. In some ways, Ellis’s performance for the Pirates against San Diego Padres on Friday 12 June 1970 was not exactly a pitching masterclass. But few of these latter-day myths compare with the unthinkable feat that played out on a misty night in San Diego five decades ago this month, when a 25-year-old right-handed starter for the Pittsburgh Pirates named Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter while tripping on LSD. While substance abuse is in no way a major component of baseball, it’s a portion that can be looked at like a mirror, in order to see a sector of our country that often has a blind eye turned to it.T he century-spanning annals of baseball are filled with accomplishments that strain credulity and force us to rethink the outer limits of human potential, like Babe Ruth’s called shot at Wrigley Field or Reggie Jackson’s three home runs on three pitches in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series. Most recently, drugs for performance enhancement have been brought forth to the public eye. In the roaring '20s, plenty of players were drinking and living it up at their favorite speakeasy, despite alcohol’s illegality. Substance abuse and bad behavior are as much a part of baseball’s history as America’s history.
After retirement, the kinder, gentler Dock Ellis became a drug counselor and is involved in many worthwhile causes. Let it be known that Ellis saw the error of his ways. Some good DID come out of this, as teams started issuing standardized ID’s to all the players primarily because of this event.
Ellis was refused entry into the park, despite showing his World Series ring as proof. Later, he had an altercation with a security guard at Riverfront Stadium, who eventually maced him. He also wore curlers in his hair while warming up, much to the chagrin of management. It was because Reggie hit a long home run off of him in the 1971 All-Star game and Ellis simply wanted to get him back.
He held the major-league record for most hit batters in an inning with three. Once, he attempted to bean the Reds' entire lineup. He was well known for not bending to the will of anybody, for any reason. This wouldn’t be his only brush with the dark side. He dove out of the way of what he thought was a line drive however, the ball was so poorly hit it didn’t even make it back to the pitcher’s mound. This game a squeaky-clean model of pitching perfection by any means. He also once stated that at one point in the game, the ball told him what to throw and where. He couldn’t feel the ball in his glove or see the catcher! Ellis stated the only thing that allowed him to see where he was pitching was the fact that his catcher, Jerry May, wore reflective tape on his fingers, and he’d zero-in on it as a target. Ellis had his girlfriend drive him to the airport and he hopped a plane to San Diego.Įllis’ own description of the game is what really makes this interesting. His girlfriend then read the paper and said he was pitching. Regardless, he was in Los Angeles and thought he had the day off. Other reports say he slept through an entire day due to a bender a couple days before and that's what had him thinking he didn't have to pitch. He didn’t even know he had to pitch that day. Is it any surprise that a baseball player dabbled in that end of the world?Įllis stated that it wasn’t his intention to pitch while under the influence of drugs.
Some have done jail-time, while others became preachers.īaseball is America’s game in every sense of the world and in 1971, all things hippy were ingrained into a reasonable portion of the population for better or for worse. Some worked in automotive body shops on their days off, some went to school in the offseason to get degrees in engineering.