Balls Out: Dock Ellis...How to throw a no-hitter on acid

Great profile by Keven McAlester in the Dallas Observer ... Baseball has shunned Dock Ellis, McAlester concludes, in spite of itself. "Ellis' one-time problems, which prevented him from being a truly great player, have since revealed him to be something more like a great person. And baseball, like the rest of us, could use a few more of those."

The lead:

Thirty-five years ago, on June 12, 1970, Pittsburgh Pirate and future Texas Rangers pitcher Dock Ellis found himself in the Los Angeles home of a childhood friend named Al Rambo. Two days earlier, he'd flown with the Pirates to San Diego for a four-game series with the Padres. He immediately rented a car and drove to L.A. to see Rambo and his girlfriend Mitzi. The next 12 hours were a fog of conversation, screwdrivers, marijuana, and, for Ellis, amphetamines. He went to sleep in the early morning, woke up sometime after noon and immediately took a dose of Purple Haze acid. Ellis would frequently drop acid on off days and weekends; he had a room in his basement christened "The Dungeon," in which he'd lock himself and listen to Jimi Hendrix or Iron Butterfly "for days."

One nice thing about Ellis is that he talks about his acidic no-hitter candidly. There must be some self-interest at work -- the acidic no-hitter seals Ellis's place among the game's great characters. But he talked about it through the "just say no" Reagan days, when discussion of drugs being a part of life (or, sacré bleu being pleasurable) was almost seen as an act of treason. And he discussed it in outlets like High Times magazine and Lysergic World.

Dock to Lysergic World, 1993:

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."