Friday Night Trading
Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No
In celebration of the greatest athletic achievement by a man on a psychedelic journey, Artist James Blagden proudly presents the animated tale of Dock Ellis' legendary LSD no-hitter. In the past few years we've heard all too much about performance enhancing drugs from greenies to tetrahydrogestrinone, and not enough about performance inhibiting drugs. If our evaluation of the records of athletes like Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds needs to be revised downwards with an asterisk, we submit that that Dock Ellis record deserves a giant exclamation point. Of the 263 no-hitters ever thrown in the Big Leagues, we can only guess how many were aided by steroids, but we can say without question that only one was ever thrown on acid.
Sadly, the great Dock Ellis died last December at 63. A year before, radio producers Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel, had recorded an interview with Ellis in which the former Pirate right hander gave a moment by moment account of June 12, 1970, the day he no-hit the San Diego Padres. Alexander and Ilels original four minute piece appeared March 29, 2008 on NPRs Weekend America. When we stumbled across that piece this past June, Blagden and Isenberg were inspired to create a short animated film around the original audio.
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Update - New Video
No No: A Dockumentary (about Dock Ellis)
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dock_Ellis
I was 4 years old when this happened (1970) and my first live game happened to be Cubs vs. Pirates, June 1971 at Wrigley Field with my cool aunt and less cool brother.
