The Incredible Accomplishment of Doc Ellis
You’ve probably never even heard of him, even if you know about baseball pretty well. If you have heard of him, then you’ve most likely heard about this story already. What’s interesting is that most people are completely unaware that this ever happened. Dock Ellis’s no hitter in 1970 was one of the more unique things to ever happen in baseball.
It wasn’t until 1984 that Ellis shared his secret with the world, so none of his teammates had even known that he was on LSD during this game. Still, this is something cray that people had a hard time believing after he revealed this.
Why would a pitcher ever take drugs on the day of his start, you ask? Well, it wasn’t as if he purposely did this. He actually mistakenly believed that his next start wasn’t for a few days, so he had taken LSD on his day off, not thinking he would have to pitch until a few days later. When he learned that it was his turn to start, he rushed to the stadium immediately.
As far as the game goes, Ellis really doesn’t remember much of what happened. He says that all of his attention was on his catcher. Ellis was extremely wild during this game. He hit a few of his opponents and walked some batters. Somehow, they couldn’t hit his pitches either.
Teammates had to let him in on the past actions of the hurler. He had a few fielding chances, but jumped out of the way. Sometimes he said the ball looked very small, while other times it was big.
As amazing as Ellis’s accomplishment is, this can’t be praised. No professional athlete should be taking drugs, especially one who had worked with children telling them not to take drugs. Nonetheless, this is a story that people will talk about for a long time.
Ellis holds a record, but it’s a notorious one. While the idea of it is amusing, we should all hope that nothing like this ever happens again.
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