The Legend of Doc Ellis

In all the excitement of last week, we neglected to mention that we reached our 500th post. To commemorate this milestone we present you with this awesome rendering of the legend of Doc Ellis and the LSD no-hitter by No Mas. What is fact is that Doc Ellis did pitch a no-hitter on June 12, 1970. Ellis, who died in 2008, always maintained that he was high on LSD during the game.

Ellis said about the game;



"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. I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, 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. 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."

Sadly no known footage exists of the Ellis no-hitter. As amazing as it is in an era where everything on a baseball field is charted, catalogued, analyzed, and digitally available, it was commonplace in the era Ellis played for TV stations to tape over games and re-use the tape. Most experts believe this is what happened to the footage of the game. The Ellis no-hitter might be the most sought after tape of a baseball game that might possibly exist somewhere.