Dock Ellis (National Baseball Hall of Fame)

Dock Ellis (National Baseball Hall of Fame)

Happy birthday to Dock Ellis, the only major league pitcher known to throw a no-hitter under the influence of LSD.

Ellis, who would have been 71 today, threw the no-no for the Pittsburgh Pirates on Friday, June 12, 1970 during the first game of doubleheader against the Padres at San Diego Stadium. The pitcher has acknowledged taking LSD the day of the game, as he was under the impression that the Pirates had a day off.

You can read all about this accomplishment in Chapter 19 of Baseball’s No-Hit Wonders: More Than a Century of Pitching’s Greatest Feats, “The Acid-Washed No-No.”

Ellis, who later in life overcame drug issues and became a drug counselor, died in 2008.

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Author: Dirk Lammers

Dirk Lammers is a veteran journalist who began rooting for the New York Mets in the early-1970s when the team’s no no-hitter count was barely 2,000 games old. Lammers has since turned his research into Baseball’s No-Hit Wonders: More Than a Century of Pitching’s Greatest Feats (Unbridled Books) and NoNoHitters.com, where he maintains the Internet's largest archive of no-hitter information.

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