On 12 June , Ellis hurled the first no-hitter of the season as he blanked the Padres in the opening game of a double-header in San Diego. Yankee hurler Bill Bevens came within one out of throwing a no-hitter against Brooklyn in the fourth game of the World Series despite issuing the Dodgers an astounding ten bases on balls. The ball I was throwing was moving. I was keeping the ball away from the hitters. Fourteen years later, however, Dock Ellis revealed an alternative explanation for his lack of control that day: he was under the influence of LSD at the time.
He looked around the house to see if his host had anything … interesting; it was Of course she did. It was just before noon when he crushed the LSD tab, snorted it, waited for the show to kick in. Now he was really confused. He arrived at San Diego Stadium at First pitch was scheduled for , first game of a twi-night doubleheader.
He then authored what is surely among the most bizarre chapters in baseball history. He would walk eight Padres, hit another. He would throw around pitches; Bob Moose, who was supposed to chart for him, gave up after a while because he was all over the place.
Willie Stargell hit a couple of solo home runs. And at p. It also is part of one of the great trivia questions — name the five pitchers who played for both the Yankees and Mets who threw no-hitters for teams OTHER than the Yankees and Mets. Answer below. You have a one-player head start.
Ellis was 25, making just his 57th career start, but the league already knew him as a force. MLB has never released the full footage of the game; only bits and pieces of it exist for public viewing, as compiled in the documentary "No No: A Dockumentary. Nonetheless, it's an incredible story attached to an incredible career and life —one unfortunately overshadowed somewhat by the no-hitter.
As a player, Ellis was equal parts ferocious and flamboyant. Once, in against the Reds, he made it his mission to plunk every Cincinnati batter in an attempt to intimidate the nascent Big Red Machine; he got five hitters into it, nailing the first three and throwing over the heads of Tony Perez and Johnny Bench, before he was pulled. Another time, as a member of the Athletics in '77, he he took pitching charts he'd been ordered to fill out and burned them in the locker room , setting off the sprinklers.
And he had to be expressly told by Commissioner Bowie Kuhn in '73 not to wear hair curlers onto the field. Ellis was more than just a character, though: He was a key part of the World Series champion Pirates and the '76 Yankees, who won the pennant, and started the '71 All-Star Game for the National League opposite Oakland's Vida Blue—the first time two pitchers of color had ever started the Midsummer Classic.
Off the field, Ellis was ahead of his time. He was outspoken on the rights of black players in baseball and frequently attacked the sport for its institutionalized racism, and was an early champion for free agency.
He was also open about his substance abuse and the proliferation of amphetamines—known as "greenies"—in the game, which he used before virtually every one of his starts, including the acid no-hitter. After baseball, he got sober and started a career as a counselor for drug addicts, focusing on helping prisoners kick their addictions. Ellis died in of cirrhosis of the liver, but his legacy lives on, regardless of whether or not the acid no-hitter was a flight of fancy or a real, lunatic day.
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