Tripping to San Diego
Today marks the 55th anniversary of Dock Ellis’ long, strange trip to San Diego, where the Pittsburgh Pirates’ sporadically brilliant pitcher no-hits the Padres 2-0 after indulging in illegal pharmaceuticals – reportedly LSD – the night before in his hometown of Los Angeles.
Ellis mistakenly is under the impression the next day is a Thursday, a scheduled off day for the Pirates between their series against the Giants in San Francisco and the one coming up in San Diego with the Padres.
Only Thursday is Ellis’ hazy world is Friday in everyone else’s reality.
Somehow, Ellis learns of this during the day on Friday and somehow finds his way to San Diego, arriving at the ballpark just 90 minutes before the start of that night’s doubleheader.
And, somehow, pitching before a smallish crowd of 9,903, Ellis labors through nine no-hit innings in the opening game, needing upward of 150 pitches to do so.
Ellis ends up striking out six Padres.
He also ends up walking eight of them and hitting another one, Ivan Murrell, with a pitch in the bottom of the fourth inning.
Future Hall of Famer Willie Stargell gives Ellis all of the runs he needs with a pair of solo homers off Padres starter Dave Roberts.
The first one leads off the top of the second inning; the second with one out in the seventh.
Ellis waits until 1984 to confirm that, yes, indeed his no-hitter on this night in 1970 comes while pitching under the influence of LSD.
Ellis says he initially has trouble focusing on the signs given to him by Pirates catcher Jerry May, troubles that only grow as his historic, albeit a hallucinogen-fueled, performance moves into the middle innings.
“I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire,” Ellis later says,
“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.”
The iconoclastic Ellis, only 25 at the time of his no-hitter, later infuriates baseball’s establishment – talking here about commissioner Bowie Kuhn – by wearing hair curlers to the field in 1973.
Somehow, Ellis lasts 12 seasons in the majors, winning 138 games for the Pirates, Yankees. A’s, Rangers and Mets before retiring in 1979.