40 Year Anniversary Of The Dock Ellis No Hitter

They don't make them like they used to as your senile old grandpa might remark when you go to visit him but they certainly don't make baseball players like Dock Ellis. Those quirky players who brightened up the sport, for either the good or for the bad, whether you were a fan of their team or not. Ellis was a starting pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates for 8 seasons, collecting a World Series ring along the way, before being the archetypal journeyman with 5 clubs in his last 4 years as he saw out his career back in Pittsburgh in 1979.






A .534 winning percentage and a career 3.46 ERA is respectable and is nothing to be sniffed at but nothing to be remembered for either, but it's his other escapades he will be remembered for. Like turning up to pitch wearing hair rollers, getting maced by a security guard while playing against Cincinnati in 1972, trying to bean the entire Cincinnati Red's team in 1974 (he only managed the first 3 hitters, walked the next and was removed after narrowly missing the fifth batter's head on two straight pitches), beaning Reggie Jackson in the face in 1972 as payback for Mr. October hitting a home run off him in the previous year's All Star Game. And not forgetting this year the 40th year anniversary of him pitching a no hitter. On acid.

As reported in Lysergic World in 1993, his memory of the game was a little hazy.

"I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the (catcher's) glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times.

The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me."



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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vUhSYLRw14