December 21, 2024 • 37 mins
Almost 48 years ago, Pirates pitcher and notorious party animal Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter while under the influence of LSD. How did this man accomplish one of the rarest feats in baseball history while, by his own admission, tripping balls? Join the Ben and Noel as they dive into the story of that legendary afternoon -- along with the parts of Dock's legacy that are too often forgotten in the modern day.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We have a fascinating, or we hope fascinating classic episode
for you ridiculous historians. If you are a fan of baseball,
if you are a fan of LSD, this is the
episode for you.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Yeah, I mean it's almost like, need we say more?
Doc Elis and the Legend of the LSD no Hitter.
Anyone out there that's a sports fan knows how hard
it is for a picture to achieve an entire game
where nobody hits the ball that they have thrown. Not
to mention while tripping on a heavy psychedelic.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
So joyed us as we dive into this thoroughly ridiculous,
absolutely true story of how Doc Ellis became a beat
me here Max, A fucking legend.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio Quick Bait and Switch.
(01:21):
At the top of the show, Ladies and Gentlemen, friends
and neighbors, you may have thought you are tuning into
a podcast, but for the moment you are at a
baseball game. Hear the crowd, smell the popcorn, the hot dogs,
the distant crack of a baseball bat, the stale urine,
the sale you're the beer that somehow smells both like
(01:43):
beer and stale.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Urine, sort of a milans. Really, it all sort of
comes together. And now, what's the word miasma?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Miasthma, A collage for the senses, a nose collage, a
cavalcade of experience.
Speaker 5 (01:56):
Hello, my name is Ben, my name is Nolan. We
love words.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
We love words almost as much as we love our
super producer, Casey batter Up pegrum.
Speaker 6 (02:09):
Noel.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I was wondering, now that we're at this hypothetical baseball game.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
Were you much of a baseballer?
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Yeah, I played the outfield when I was like in
elementary school, but I was you know, I was a
turd rest of development. Yeah, I was no good and
I was just looking around, you know, just smelling the pee,
not really being a very effective part of the team.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Wait, you were in a stale urine soaked little league,
and they all they all smell like that, Ben, from
the little leagues to the minor leagues to the major leagues,
they all smell like p Well, we did grow up.
I do love that unintentional rume. We did grow up
in different towns. I associated with the smell of peanuts.
I was also an outfield guy, so maybe.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
That's when I met pe nuts. Peanuts, go, I'm sorry,
I was confused.
Speaker 5 (02:59):
No, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So it's strange because one of the one of the
most beautiful series of memories that I have from growing
up is that in the early nineties you could get very,
very cheap field side seats, and that was my primary
informative experience with baseball until we started doing Ridiculous History
(03:24):
and exploring some of the strange baseball stories, most particularly
Curse of the Kernel. But even if you haven't played baseball,
or even if you hate baseball ridiculous historians, you have
probably experienced one of the most amazing cognitive things that
humans are capable of experiencing.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Dropping acid.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I was going to say, flow state. Oh cool, it's
one of those too. Yeah. There are many roads to
the rome known as the Flow State Meditation Exercise LSD,
and today today our story encounters all three baseball LSD
(04:06):
and the flow state. It's true, at least it is
commonly accepted as true. Right, So, Noel, could you could
you set the scene? Could you take us there?
Speaker 5 (04:16):
Yeah, I will take you there.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
It was a Friday on June the twelfth of nineteen seventy,
right on the tail end of you know, the rule
in the sixties, that's not what they were called.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
That was the twenties. What were the sixties. What's a
good adjective for the sixties?
Speaker 4 (04:34):
The vibrant, the vibrant, unbridled, unhinged, tune in, free lawn,
drop out, free love, free, all that stuff. And you know,
a big part of that was a guy named Timothy
Leary who was he worked at Harvard in the laboratories there,
but he researched with the effects of psychedelic drugs on
(04:59):
the mind, and he became this kind of Svengali of
the sixties and of psychedelic experiences.
Speaker 5 (05:07):
Right, a guru figure. It's true. And there was another
guy named Doc Ellis.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
On that day, June twelfth, nineteen seventy, who was a
fantastic pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he had just
arrived at the stadium in San Diego, California, to be
the starting pitcher for a game against the San Diego Padres.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
But here's the problem. He got there just an hour
and a half, ninety minutes before he's supposed to be
on the field, and he is not sober because he's
coming in and he had no idea that he was
supposed to play today. In fact, he has partied to
a cartoonish degree the night before, Right, he's dropped acid.
(05:54):
He drank like a fish, and he woke up the
same day and I think it was about what about
noon that he took another hit of acid.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Yeah, he was in Los Angeles, there's his hometown. The
game was in San Diego. He thought he had a
day off. He did have a day off, but he
burned through that day off as you just described. And
then he woke up at around noon after having taken
another hit. And it was a friend, a girlfriend of
one of his childhood friends who he was hanging out
with and then crashed over there with, showed him the newspaper,
(06:28):
the day's newspaper, the sports page more specifically, which said, hey,
you're the starting pitcher for this game that's about to
happen today in San Diego. So he got all the
stuff together, ran the airport while tripping on LSD. Mind,
you caught an afternoon flight and a cab directly to
(06:52):
the stadium.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
And here's the there's this great article on ESPN by
Patrick Ruby that explained it this way, and this is
according to doc Ellis himself. He landed in the San
Diego airport. He hopped in a cab outside and all
he said was, Casey, can you beat me on this?
Get to the stadium? I got a pitch, yeah, and
(07:15):
pitch he did.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
You know what's funny, I'm thinking about all this, and
I'm thinking about just the stress of going to the
airport in general, and like being on a tight timeline,
being worried about missing your flight, or being worried about
missing your appointment or whatever. Can you imagine that with
the added stress of, you know, being in an altered state.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah, I was thinking about this because you know, stress
can be such a personal thing, you know. I was
wondering how much would it stress him out? To me,
being late for something is more stressful than going to
an airport. I hate being late for stuff. But regardless
of which way you look at it, compounding that with
an altered state of consciousness, and then also compounding that
(07:59):
with the fact that you are a public performer. You're
an athlete, right, who's going to be performing in crowd.
It's not like you're late to your job as an
archivist in a basement where no one will see you
for eight hours. He was also twenty five years old,
known for his curveball and his partying days. That's another
(08:20):
thing that makes me wonder about his state of stress
in this moment, was because it wasn't like this was
his first bender.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
Not at all. No, not at all. And we will
get to that.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
But let's hear a little clip that does a really
good job of summing up how it might have felt
to be standing in that particular situation, in that particular
state of mind.
Speaker 7 (08:41):
There was one guy, one guy who had an amazing
claim to fame in terms of drugs and sports. His
name was Doc Ellis, and Doc Ellis did an incredible thing.
The one person who knows, Thank you, doc Ellis pitched
a no hitter on LSD.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
You've taken LSD.
Speaker 7 (09:01):
Tell the others how hard that might be. If I
took LSD, I'd be talking to every blade of grass
like sorry, sorry, sir, to walk into a Major League
Baseball stadium like.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
The whole feel is okay. So your little creative license
there from Robin Williams.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
But he did tip us off to the outcome of this,
this this thing that doc Ellis did.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
He pitched a no hitter.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yes, and this is an incredibly rare feat. In one
hundred and thirty six years of baseball history, only two
hundred and seventy six no hitters have ever been recorded,
and as far as we know, this is the only
one that occurred under the influence of LSD. And it's
strange because you would expect maybe he would call out
(09:53):
of the game, maybe he would show up and have
an abysmal performance, But he played on acid, not only
well but spectacularly. He also did walk quite a few batters,
but no one hit a ball that he threw. And additionally,
no one knew that he was on LSD, or virtually
(10:15):
no one. It wasn't until fourteen years later that Ellis
confirmed to a reporter at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that
he had played the game on acid. And the reporter,
Bob Smisik, brought this up because he was working off
a tip somebody had told them there was a rumor. Also,
(10:40):
Ellis didn't just say that he took acid. He said
he took acid that he received from Tim Leary, the
guru himself.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
He did say that thing. Ben.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
It's very true, and it's a problematic story for a
few reasons that come from that ESPN article that we
talked about earlier, but it's called the Long Strange Trip
of Ellis. But it wasn't smysic that Doc told that
particular part of the story too. It was later when
he was inducted into something called the Baseball Reliquary Shrine
(11:12):
of the Eternals that was in Pasadena, California, and he
was talking to the executive director I named Terry Cannon,
who he told that Leary, that former Harvard psych professor
had given him the drug because he wanted to see
he wanted to test how it would affect a professional athlete.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
That's a weird claim, though, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
It's a very weird claim, a claim that has several
serious problems that are outlined beautifully in this article. One
of the big ones right off the bat was that
during this time Leary was in fact incarcerated, and that
comes from his biography Robert Greenfield.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And then another thing is he said that he got
the acid from a UCLA laboratory. And also people on
leside don't agree.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Leary actually has a personal archivist, a guy named Michael Horowitz,
that said this was just almost definitely bogus, based on
I think probably most specifically the fact that he was
in jail. But he did say that Leary knew about
the new hitter and found out about it, and that
he had purchased Leary some of Doc Ellis's baseball cards,
and that Leary carried one around with him for the
(12:24):
rest of his life to show off to fans of
psychedelics and sports.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Right, So if we look at the timeline here, that
makes it sound much more likely that Leary, while a fan,
learned of this experience afterwards rather than beforehand. You know
what I mean.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
I do know what you mean.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
And it's interesting too, because Ellis had, as you said,
been a reputation that was not only about partying, but
was it just about being kind of his own kind
of free spirit in jail, he kind of did things
his own way, march to his own drummer, and you know,
you get the gist.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah. He described himself as arrogant, flamboyant, and controversial. There's
an article from The Washington Post by Matt Shudel that
explains some of Ellis's erratic behavior, or at least depicts it.
He was known for throwing balls directly at batters, arguing
with managers and players from other teams, and he even
(13:29):
chased Heckler's in the stands. So you know, there are
a lot of fans of sports who will heckel the
opposing team's players. This was a guy who would come
after you.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
Oh big time. It is crazy.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
And he came up in the minors like he was like,
I think eighteen years old when he got recruited, maybe
nineteen when he first started playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates,
and this was during a time of horrible racial inequality
in the United States.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
He refused in many ways to fit in that stereo
tear typical cookie cutter image that mass media and the
culture of the time would try to force people into
based on what they perceived as what this person should
be like or what they were doing. One of my
favorite examples he once showed up in the Pirate's bullpen
(14:17):
wearing hair curlers because he said that the resulting moisture
on his head would help him throw his signature into
illegal spitball, yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:26):
Very illegalist.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
Spitball is an illegal pitch where the pitcher actually changes
the way the ball contacts the hand by putting spit
or some kind of like foreign substance like petroleum jelly
or in this case, the sweat off of the back
of his neck.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
But yeah, he.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Actually got issued a letter from the commissioner of Major
League Baseball ordering him not to wear hair curlers. And
the thing with him was he just didn't like being
told what to do. And he might have come off
as erratic or just wilful, but he kind of knew
what he was doing. According to a lot of his
(15:05):
childhood friends, people that had known him his whole life,
that were interviewed in a really cool movie called No No,
a documentary Dock which is excellent and a really good
deep dive into this very divisive and interesting man's life.
So in the film, another picture named Steve Blass said
(15:27):
that in those days, which was the sixties, they were
playing a lot of day games, so everyone was showing
up completely hungover, and one way that you dealt with
that was by taking amphetamines.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
See history today remembers doc Ellis primarily as the guy
who pitched a no hitter while he was on LSD.
But there are a couple of things that are misremembered there.
One is the nature of LSD you'r acid and how
high he would have been actually, And then the second
(16:05):
thing is that was not the normal thing. It was
much more normal for players to be consuming amphetamines.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Yeah, several players from that era were interviewed for this film,
and I think the number got as high as like
ninety six percent. These guys are obviously, you know, editorializing
here a little bit. There's no poll that was taken,
but they were in the game. You know, they were
around these guys, and they knew what was done. And
it wasn't like people weren't juicing in those days. They
(16:35):
weren't taking steroids necessarily. They were popping Benny's and Greenies.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Or Dexa mil right, which was a drug a choice.
And this was kind of before the era of widespread
steroid uses.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
So one thing we absolutely want to do in the
exploration of this story is established that, yeah, Doc Ellis
may have been the only person on the field on LSD,
but that doesn't mean he was the only person on
the field on.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
Drugs in an altered state.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
In an altered state, right, because I mean the thing
about you know, those kinds of amphetamine, this is the
kind of stuff that fighter pilots would take you know,
during World War Two, Hitler.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
Was quite fond of them.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
Not to equate baseball players from the sixties with Adolf Hitler,
but it was certainly a tool of war. And sports
are nothing if not organized war where nobody dies, you know.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
That's one of the more popular philosophical interpretations of athleticism
that goes back, you know, into ancient days brandy circuses, right, right,
weren't the chop heads.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Although people might die of like heatstroke or you know,
some sort of dramatic brain injury over time, but typically
you would not see people carried off of the field
of baseball in a stretcher.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
And there was also a pro cannabis culture at the time, Right,
it was not uncommon for athletes to also smoke weed.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
It's true, And I'm wondering, man, I couldn't quite find this.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
But when did it, Like if this was such common
knowledge or it just seems so obvious. I did see
a trainer saying I don't want this in my locker room.
Don't let me see you doing it. But certainly seemed
quite pervasive. When was it that, like widespread drug testing
became a thing in Major League baseball.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah, you have to wonder if it was a result
of widespread drug test policies. Maybe players only stopped doing
this stuff when it became a firable or finable offense, right,
other than someone writing a angry letter to you. There's
also a question about how much drug use really has dwindled.
(18:45):
According to an article by Huffington Post written by Andy
Martino in twenty seventeen, current and former baseball players have
said that as many as twenty five percent of Major
League Baseball players have you cocaine? So, is it a
situation where there are fewer altered states? Or is this
situation where the type of drug changes but drug use
(19:08):
still exist.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
Yeah, I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I'm not quite sure either. But it's mystifying because as
a fairly square person myself, I would just imagine that
these all have radically different effects.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
Right, I would think so. Ben.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Here's the thing too about doc ellis he you know,
we talk about the drug use, We talked about him
being a bit of a loose cannon, but he was
described by a lot of his friends in this documentary as.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Being controlled crazy. They called him controlled crazy.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
He knew how to keep his wild behavior in check
and to do it just enough so that it could
make him money like Dennis Robins style.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Right, So there might be some marketing there, some focused
application of eccentricity or insanity.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
That's right, because you have to think too.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
In those days, especially during this No hitter, African American
pop culture had really infiltrated the mainstream, and Doc was
a flashy guy.
Speaker 5 (20:03):
He had fashion sense.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
He liked to wear big, loud colors and big, you know,
clunky clogs and bell bottoms, and he was like one
of the first guys to wear an earring. Very ahead
of his time culturally, at least in terms of baseball,
because he actually was quoted as saying when talking about
the nineteen seventy one All Star Game that baseball was
(20:26):
pretty backwards when it came to black players. And there
was a controversy because he really liked to stir stuff up,
and in the press he came out and said, you
were not going to put two brothers against each other
in this All Star Game, meaning they had already said
that they were going to start the American League team
(20:46):
with Vida Blue, who was a black pitcher, and Doc
thought that he was going to not get to start
for his league because a guy named Sparky Anderson, a
white guy, was probably going to get that privilege.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
So he got the.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Media all stirred up and was kind of able to
bait them into getting him exactly what he wanted, and
he was He started in the All Star Game, right.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
And it's strange because looking back in his later interviews
when he sobered up, Ellis said that he did not
remember a lot of these activities. Not only did he
not remember a lot of the details of his legendary
no hitter run, he also said he didn't remember much
(21:30):
of nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy in general.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
Yeah, it's like, what is it Matt LeBlanc and Friends.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
He said he couldn't remember like a whole season of
that show because he was on so many pills the
whole time.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
Yeah, I can't imagine not remembering like a whole year.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I mean, it could happen for a number of reasons.
I've got I got a few fuzzy ones. I think
I'm going to take us down a really brief side
trail here that listeners from some of the other shows
are familiar with, regardless of what sort of substances you
may or may not take throughout your life. Your memory
is treacherous and works against you, oh for sure, because
every time you're remembering something, you're not remembering the event,
(22:05):
you're remembering the last time you remembered it. So you're
playing a game of telephone with yourself. That's why you
will see even an accounts we've presented in this show.
That's why I'll see people who years later claim that
a myth about them is true, even when it is
demonstrably not the case. And I had a question with Ellis.
(22:28):
I don't know how you feel, Noel, but I believe
the LSD story. I think it's true.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
In fact, you can hear Doc himself describe all of
this in a really cool animated short by an outfit
called No Moss that's illustrated by a guy named James
Blagden and has audio from an interview that Ellis did
in two thousand and eight on NPR with Donnelle Alexander
and Niley elll And it's a really really cool video.
(22:56):
And when we play a little clip of that audio
right now, I didn't see the hitters.
Speaker 8 (23:02):
All I could tell was if there was on the
right side or.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
The left side.
Speaker 8 (23:06):
The catcher put tape on his favors so I could
see the signals. We had a rookie on a team
at that particular time named Dave Cash, and he kept
saying after the first inning, he said, you gotta know
no going no hit it.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
I said, yeah, right, yeah, I don't know, Ben, But
hearing him tell that story, it sure sounds like somebody
telling a story they actually believe happened.
Speaker 5 (23:31):
But it's hard to say.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
We also know that he was probably not telling the
truth about the whole Timothy Leary thing. So you know,
I guess the jury is out, but I would like
to believe that it happened.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
So I don't know about you, fellow ridiculous historians, but
I largely believe the bones of this story, the structure
of it. However, I have some pretty pertinent questions, one
being the degree of alteration that applied. If you look
at the timeline of the LSD was taking the way
(24:01):
LSD works, was he taking a larger hit, you know,
was he off his cantalopes or was he experiencing the
equivalent of what Silicon Valley and Burning Man fans would
call a microdose yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
I mean, you know, from hearing him tell it, this
was his second tab that he had taken, and in
those days that stuff probably would have been pretty potent,
So I would lean more towards the what the kids
called trip and balls.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
So this LSD probably would have come from a source
similar to Owlsley, the legendary LSD supplier. And the reason
I'm wondering about the microdosing is because preliminary studies, which
have only occurred quite recently, seemed to indicate that there
may be some sort of relationship between what we call
(24:50):
the flow state and the use of small amounts of hallucinogens,
not just LSD but psilocybin. So without getting two into it,
I have some I have some pretty fascinating studies, but
I'd like to hear from you folks. Do you think
that there was a relationship between the LSD that doc
(25:10):
Ellis consumed. Did it put him in a flow state
similar to the experience people would have when they practice
the use of transcranial direct current simulation or meditation or
what have you, or do you think it was a coincidence?
Do you think he succeeded in spite of this?
Speaker 4 (25:34):
You know, I did hear or I read that that
year the Padres were not particularly good.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
They had lost like nineteen thumping games in that season,
so you know, could have just been a bad performance
on their part.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
That either way, it's it's it's pretty impressive that a
guy could perform that well under the influence of such
a mind altering substance.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yeah, and Ellis's Ellis's importance and his influence were not
just confined to the field of play. He was influential
and important on the US cultural stage, and other people
acknowledged this right very much.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
So, I mean, we talked about how he was able
to influence that decision of starting two black pitchers against
one another in the nineteen seventy one All Star Game.
Also that year, he went on to win the World
Series with the Pirates, and one of his mentors was
a Puerto Rican player, also black, by the name of
(26:34):
Roberto Clemente, who was himself an outspoken opponent of racism
in baseball, and he and Ellis ended up being on
a version of the Pirates that had nine black players,
and it really kind of was right on this turning
point of culture where black culture became much more mainstream
(26:56):
like we talked about earlier, and players on the team
talk about this being a historic thing and just being
about the fact that everyone was fantastic baseball players. So
he really helped turn that conversation around to the point
where he actually got a very important letter from Jackie Robinson.
And actually here's a clip of Doc reading a bit
(27:18):
of this letter from that documentary called No No.
Speaker 6 (27:21):
I read your coments in our paper the last few
days and wanted you to know how much I appreciate
your courage and honesty. In my opinion, progress for today's
players will only come from this kind of dedication.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
I'm sure.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
Also you know some of the possible consequences. The news media,
while knowing full well you're right and honest, will use
every means to get back at you. That will be
times when you will ask yourself, is it worth it all?
I can only say, Doc, it is, And even though
you will want to yield, in the long run, your
(27:58):
own feeling of yourself will be most important. So I'd
have to be left alone.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
So he goes on to say, try to get more
players to understand your views and you will find great support.
You have made a real contribution. I surely hope your
great ability continues. That ability will determine the success of
your dedication and honesty. I again appreciate what you were doing.
Continued success, Jackie Robinson, and you can read the full
(28:26):
letter on various sites online. Just search for Jackie Robinson
and Doc Ellis. This leads us to perhaps one of
the most important points of the story, which is the following.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
It is very easy, it.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Is tempting, and it is guess fun to think of
doc Ellis solely as a guy who said, I started
having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard
Nixon was the home played umpire. I thought I was
pitching a baseball to Jimmy Hendricks and so on. But
that is a mischaracterization. We are defining an entire person
(29:03):
by one afternoon in their life. And as Brittany de
la Cretaz argues in a Rolling Stone article, how Doc Ellis,
player who pitched a no hitter on LSD, is misremembered,
it is better, and more importantly, it is more accurate
to remember him as an outspoken advocate not just for
(29:25):
racial equality but also for sobriety. Doc Ellis retired from
baseball in nineteen eighty and he didn't have some egregious
injury that rendered him physically incapable playing the game. According
to him, he lost interest in the game and in
that same year he entered rehab. He stayed for forty
(29:47):
days at a location in Wickenberg, Arizona, known as the Meadows.
And it wasn't until nineteen eighty four that he revealed
he had pitched this no hitter under the influence of
LSD and once achieving sobriety, he spent the rest of
his life helping other people escape drug addiction, which is commendable,
(30:13):
you know. And he spent twenty eight years doing this.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
Yeah, he was no joke about it either.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
I mean he brought that same bravado and intensity that
he brought to the game and that he used to
not take any crap from anybody in terms of the
way he dealt with racism. He brought that same energy
to helping people escape their demons and their addictions and
not taking no for an answer and not putting up
(30:42):
with anyone making excuses for themselves.
Speaker 5 (30:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
And he had worked as a counselor in Beverly Hills.
He had worked in jails and institutions and juvenile detention centers,
And you know, you kind of have to wonder, and
I don't know what whether there's an answer to this,
but you kind of have to wonder why, out of
the almost three decades of work he did helping people
(31:07):
achieve sobriety, he is still known for one, granted, one
amazing game, but one LSD influenced game in nineteen seventy.
I don't know what the answer is.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
I mean, from his own mouth.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Apparently one of his favorite phrases around the house was
f baseball. He apparently, according to this fantastic ESPN article,
felt very used up and abused by it, having started
at it at such a young age, and despite achieving
such a great success, it being a very big part
(31:44):
of his young adult life that possibly led to some
of these substance abuse problems to help deal with pain
that he had in his arm from throwing the ball
so hard all the time, from traveling around, being constantly
on the road, feeling a little uprooted and isolated. And
these are his own words from the documentary, So you know,
(32:07):
I could see how that would be a complicated relationship.
It's something that gave him much success and accolades, but
he never played a game sober.
Speaker 5 (32:17):
He did try to one time.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
In nineteen seventy three, gave it.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
A shot and started warming up in the bullpen, only
to realize that he had quote forgotten how to throw.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
It's interesting because it ties into something that people call
state dependent learning.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
Have you heard of this?
Speaker 7 (32:32):
I have.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
It's the idea that the substances influencing your body when
you are learning or engaging in a certain skill then
have an effect on your performance and that skill. So,
for instance, a more wholesome version of this would be
the idea that when you drink coffee and you're studying something,
(32:55):
then you are going to be more likely to successfully
recall it when you are drinking coffee again, right, that's
a very at base explanation, but it can extend to
other substances as well. Oh, I should also mention he
was he was an advocate for the treatment of sickle
cell that's right.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
He was able to get funding in somewhere in the
neighborhood of one hundred and forty million dollars for that
disease that was largely misunderstood and a huge problem for
the African American community.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
In nineteen eighty ninety sort of returned to baseball when
he served as a player and coach for the Saint
Petersburg Pelicans of the Senior Professional Baseball Association, but that was,
I think more for the love of the game.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
He also had a little stint in acting, I think,
where he was in a movie with Michael Keaton.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yeah, Gung Ho, which was nineteen eighty six, directed by
Ron Howard. In two thousand and seven, Doc Ellis was
diagnosed with cirrhosis and was placed on the list for
a liver transplant.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
And he did pass away two thousand and eight because
unfortunately he had already sustained some damage to his heart
and it was too risky to do a liver transplant.
And Yeah, you can't help it think that that liver
problems like that were the result of a lifetime of
that substance abuse. Despite having dealt with that and been
(34:18):
a huge beacon of hope for others that we're dealing
with those problems, that stuff does catch up to you.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
It's it's absolutely true, and it's a shame that he
was not around to see No No, a documentary which
came out in twenty fourteen. A few years after his passing,
he was interred at the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.
And although Doc Ellis may have physically left us today,
(34:45):
his legacy continues on. And it's not just a story
about again an amazing afternoon in baseball. It's a story
about a man who struggled first to save himself, then
to improve society, and then ultimately to save others that
(35:08):
he met in similar situations. That's beautiful, it really is,
and we hope that you think so too. This is
a fun one to look into.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Cannot recommend enough that ESPN article from Outside the Lines
called the Long Strange Trip of Doc Ellis, Meet the
Man behind Baseball's most Psychedelic Myth. You can find that
online in full by Patrick Ruby. It's also got some
fantastic photos and illustrations by Joe Chiardello. Also cannot recommend
(35:36):
enough the documentary No No, a documentary.
Speaker 5 (35:41):
You can stream that on Amazon Prime. I think it's
like a couple bucks.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
And well worth it. It's money well spent in the meantime.
Although the podcast is over for today, if you have
a hankering to encounter more history of the Ridiculous variety.
You can find us on Instagram, you can find us
on faceboo book, you can find us on Twitter. We'd
especially like to recommend our community page, Ridiculous Historians, where
you can interact with your fellow listeners, all of whom,
(36:10):
as far as I have found, are witty, funny, and insightful.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
It's true memes a plenty, a lot of fun to
be had there, so check it out and also do
us a solid and leave us a nice review on
iTunes because it makes us feel good and our tummies.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
And stay tuned when we return very soon in our
next episode to crack the case for a question we
might not have known you had. When did Fido become
a stand in name for dogs?
Speaker 5 (36:37):
Here boy, here boy, while you're.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Waiting for a dog that heard that through your headphones
to run towards you. We would like to thank superproducer
Casey Pegrom. We would like to thank our research assistant
Christopher Hasiotis.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
We'd like to thank Alex Williams, friend of the show,
who composed our theme, and most importantly, we'd like to
thank you for hanging out with.
Speaker 5 (36:58):
Us and being a lot of fun. We'll see you
next time
Speaker 4 (37:05):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
We have a fascinating, or we hope fascinating classic episode
for you ridiculous historians. If you are a fan of baseball,
if you are a fan of LSD, this is the
episode for you.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Yeah, I mean it's almost like, need we say more?
Doc Elis and the Legend of the LSD no Hitter.
Anyone out there that's a sports fan knows how hard
it is for a picture to achieve an entire game
where nobody hits the ball that they have thrown. Not
to mention while tripping on a heavy psychedelic.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
So joyed us as we dive into this thoroughly ridiculous,
absolutely true story of how Doc Ellis became a beat
me here Max, A fucking legend.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio Quick Bait and Switch.
(01:21):
At the top of the show, Ladies and Gentlemen, friends
and neighbors, you may have thought you are tuning into
a podcast, but for the moment you are at a
baseball game. Hear the crowd, smell the popcorn, the hot dogs,
the distant crack of a baseball bat, the stale urine,
the sale you're the beer that somehow smells both like
(01:43):
beer and stale.
Speaker 4 (01:45):
Urine, sort of a milans. Really, it all sort of
comes together. And now, what's the word miasma?
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Miasthma, A collage for the senses, a nose collage, a
cavalcade of experience.
Speaker 5 (01:56):
Hello, my name is Ben, my name is Nolan. We
love words.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
We love words almost as much as we love our
super producer, Casey batter Up pegrum.
Speaker 6 (02:09):
Noel.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
I was wondering, now that we're at this hypothetical baseball game.
Speaker 5 (02:14):
Were you much of a baseballer?
Speaker 4 (02:16):
Yeah, I played the outfield when I was like in
elementary school, but I was you know, I was a
turd rest of development. Yeah, I was no good and
I was just looking around, you know, just smelling the pee,
not really being a very effective part of the team.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Wait, you were in a stale urine soaked little league,
and they all they all smell like that, Ben, from
the little leagues to the minor leagues to the major leagues,
they all smell like p Well, we did grow up.
I do love that unintentional rume. We did grow up
in different towns. I associated with the smell of peanuts.
I was also an outfield guy, so maybe.
Speaker 4 (02:55):
That's when I met pe nuts. Peanuts, go, I'm sorry,
I was confused.
Speaker 5 (02:59):
No, no, no, not at all.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
So it's strange because one of the one of the
most beautiful series of memories that I have from growing
up is that in the early nineties you could get very,
very cheap field side seats, and that was my primary
informative experience with baseball until we started doing Ridiculous History
(03:24):
and exploring some of the strange baseball stories, most particularly
Curse of the Kernel. But even if you haven't played baseball,
or even if you hate baseball ridiculous historians, you have
probably experienced one of the most amazing cognitive things that
humans are capable of experiencing.
Speaker 5 (03:43):
Dropping acid.
Speaker 1 (03:45):
I was going to say, flow state. Oh cool, it's
one of those too. Yeah. There are many roads to
the rome known as the Flow State Meditation Exercise LSD,
and today today our story encounters all three baseball LSD
(04:06):
and the flow state. It's true, at least it is
commonly accepted as true. Right, So, Noel, could you could
you set the scene? Could you take us there?
Speaker 5 (04:16):
Yeah, I will take you there.
Speaker 4 (04:18):
It was a Friday on June the twelfth of nineteen seventy,
right on the tail end of you know, the rule
in the sixties, that's not what they were called.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
That was the twenties. What were the sixties. What's a
good adjective for the sixties?
Speaker 4 (04:34):
The vibrant, the vibrant, unbridled, unhinged, tune in, free lawn,
drop out, free love, free, all that stuff. And you know,
a big part of that was a guy named Timothy
Leary who was he worked at Harvard in the laboratories there,
but he researched with the effects of psychedelic drugs on
(04:59):
the mind, and he became this kind of Svengali of
the sixties and of psychedelic experiences.
Speaker 5 (05:07):
Right, a guru figure. It's true. And there was another
guy named Doc Ellis.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
On that day, June twelfth, nineteen seventy, who was a
fantastic pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he had just
arrived at the stadium in San Diego, California, to be
the starting pitcher for a game against the San Diego Padres.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
But here's the problem. He got there just an hour
and a half, ninety minutes before he's supposed to be
on the field, and he is not sober because he's
coming in and he had no idea that he was
supposed to play today. In fact, he has partied to
a cartoonish degree the night before, Right, he's dropped acid.
(05:54):
He drank like a fish, and he woke up the
same day and I think it was about what about
noon that he took another hit of acid.
Speaker 4 (06:06):
Yeah, he was in Los Angeles, there's his hometown. The
game was in San Diego. He thought he had a
day off. He did have a day off, but he
burned through that day off as you just described. And
then he woke up at around noon after having taken
another hit. And it was a friend, a girlfriend of
one of his childhood friends who he was hanging out
with and then crashed over there with, showed him the newspaper,
(06:28):
the day's newspaper, the sports page more specifically, which said, hey,
you're the starting pitcher for this game that's about to
happen today in San Diego. So he got all the
stuff together, ran the airport while tripping on LSD. Mind,
you caught an afternoon flight and a cab directly to
(06:52):
the stadium.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
And here's the there's this great article on ESPN by
Patrick Ruby that explained it this way, and this is
according to doc Ellis himself. He landed in the San
Diego airport. He hopped in a cab outside and all
he said was, Casey, can you beat me on this?
Get to the stadium? I got a pitch, yeah, and
(07:15):
pitch he did.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
You know what's funny, I'm thinking about all this, and
I'm thinking about just the stress of going to the
airport in general, and like being on a tight timeline,
being worried about missing your flight, or being worried about
missing your appointment or whatever. Can you imagine that with
the added stress of, you know, being in an altered state.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yeah, I was thinking about this because you know, stress
can be such a personal thing, you know. I was
wondering how much would it stress him out? To me,
being late for something is more stressful than going to
an airport. I hate being late for stuff. But regardless
of which way you look at it, compounding that with
an altered state of consciousness, and then also compounding that
(07:59):
with the fact that you are a public performer. You're
an athlete, right, who's going to be performing in crowd.
It's not like you're late to your job as an
archivist in a basement where no one will see you
for eight hours. He was also twenty five years old,
known for his curveball and his partying days. That's another
(08:20):
thing that makes me wonder about his state of stress
in this moment, was because it wasn't like this was
his first bender.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
Not at all. No, not at all. And we will
get to that.
Speaker 4 (08:31):
But let's hear a little clip that does a really
good job of summing up how it might have felt
to be standing in that particular situation, in that particular
state of mind.
Speaker 7 (08:41):
There was one guy, one guy who had an amazing
claim to fame in terms of drugs and sports. His
name was Doc Ellis, and Doc Ellis did an incredible thing.
The one person who knows, Thank you, doc Ellis pitched
a no hitter on LSD.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
You've taken LSD.
Speaker 7 (09:01):
Tell the others how hard that might be. If I
took LSD, I'd be talking to every blade of grass
like sorry, sorry, sir, to walk into a Major League
Baseball stadium like.
Speaker 5 (09:16):
The whole feel is okay. So your little creative license
there from Robin Williams.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
But he did tip us off to the outcome of this,
this this thing that doc Ellis did.
Speaker 5 (09:30):
He pitched a no hitter.
Speaker 1 (09:32):
Yes, and this is an incredibly rare feat. In one
hundred and thirty six years of baseball history, only two
hundred and seventy six no hitters have ever been recorded,
and as far as we know, this is the only
one that occurred under the influence of LSD. And it's
strange because you would expect maybe he would call out
(09:53):
of the game, maybe he would show up and have
an abysmal performance, But he played on acid, not only
well but spectacularly. He also did walk quite a few batters,
but no one hit a ball that he threw. And additionally,
no one knew that he was on LSD, or virtually
(10:15):
no one. It wasn't until fourteen years later that Ellis
confirmed to a reporter at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that
he had played the game on acid. And the reporter,
Bob Smisik, brought this up because he was working off
a tip somebody had told them there was a rumor. Also,
(10:40):
Ellis didn't just say that he took acid. He said
he took acid that he received from Tim Leary, the
guru himself.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
He did say that thing. Ben.
Speaker 4 (10:50):
It's very true, and it's a problematic story for a
few reasons that come from that ESPN article that we
talked about earlier, but it's called the Long Strange Trip
of Ellis. But it wasn't smysic that Doc told that
particular part of the story too. It was later when
he was inducted into something called the Baseball Reliquary Shrine
(11:12):
of the Eternals that was in Pasadena, California, and he
was talking to the executive director I named Terry Cannon,
who he told that Leary, that former Harvard psych professor
had given him the drug because he wanted to see
he wanted to test how it would affect a professional athlete.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
That's a weird claim, though, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
It's a very weird claim, a claim that has several
serious problems that are outlined beautifully in this article. One
of the big ones right off the bat was that
during this time Leary was in fact incarcerated, and that
comes from his biography Robert Greenfield.
Speaker 5 (11:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
And then another thing is he said that he got
the acid from a UCLA laboratory. And also people on
leside don't agree.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
Leary actually has a personal archivist, a guy named Michael Horowitz,
that said this was just almost definitely bogus, based on
I think probably most specifically the fact that he was
in jail. But he did say that Leary knew about
the new hitter and found out about it, and that
he had purchased Leary some of Doc Ellis's baseball cards,
and that Leary carried one around with him for the
(12:24):
rest of his life to show off to fans of
psychedelics and sports.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
Right, So if we look at the timeline here, that
makes it sound much more likely that Leary, while a fan,
learned of this experience afterwards rather than beforehand. You know
what I mean.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
I do know what you mean.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
And it's interesting too, because Ellis had, as you said,
been a reputation that was not only about partying, but
was it just about being kind of his own kind
of free spirit in jail, he kind of did things
his own way, march to his own drummer, and you know,
you get the gist.
Speaker 5 (13:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah. He described himself as arrogant, flamboyant, and controversial. There's
an article from The Washington Post by Matt Shudel that
explains some of Ellis's erratic behavior, or at least depicts it.
He was known for throwing balls directly at batters, arguing
with managers and players from other teams, and he even
(13:29):
chased Heckler's in the stands. So you know, there are
a lot of fans of sports who will heckel the
opposing team's players. This was a guy who would come
after you.
Speaker 5 (13:39):
Oh big time. It is crazy.
Speaker 4 (13:41):
And he came up in the minors like he was like,
I think eighteen years old when he got recruited, maybe
nineteen when he first started playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates,
and this was during a time of horrible racial inequality
in the United States.
Speaker 1 (13:56):
He refused in many ways to fit in that stereo
tear typical cookie cutter image that mass media and the
culture of the time would try to force people into
based on what they perceived as what this person should
be like or what they were doing. One of my
favorite examples he once showed up in the Pirate's bullpen
(14:17):
wearing hair curlers because he said that the resulting moisture
on his head would help him throw his signature into
illegal spitball, yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:26):
Very illegalist.
Speaker 4 (14:26):
Spitball is an illegal pitch where the pitcher actually changes
the way the ball contacts the hand by putting spit
or some kind of like foreign substance like petroleum jelly
or in this case, the sweat off of the back
of his neck.
Speaker 5 (14:43):
But yeah, he.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Actually got issued a letter from the commissioner of Major
League Baseball ordering him not to wear hair curlers. And
the thing with him was he just didn't like being
told what to do. And he might have come off
as erratic or just wilful, but he kind of knew
what he was doing. According to a lot of his
(15:05):
childhood friends, people that had known him his whole life,
that were interviewed in a really cool movie called No No,
a documentary Dock which is excellent and a really good
deep dive into this very divisive and interesting man's life.
So in the film, another picture named Steve Blass said
(15:27):
that in those days, which was the sixties, they were
playing a lot of day games, so everyone was showing
up completely hungover, and one way that you dealt with
that was by taking amphetamines.
Speaker 5 (15:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
See history today remembers doc Ellis primarily as the guy
who pitched a no hitter while he was on LSD.
But there are a couple of things that are misremembered there.
One is the nature of LSD you'r acid and how
high he would have been actually, And then the second
(16:05):
thing is that was not the normal thing. It was
much more normal for players to be consuming amphetamines.
Speaker 4 (16:13):
Yeah, several players from that era were interviewed for this film,
and I think the number got as high as like
ninety six percent. These guys are obviously, you know, editorializing
here a little bit. There's no poll that was taken,
but they were in the game. You know, they were
around these guys, and they knew what was done. And
it wasn't like people weren't juicing in those days. They
(16:35):
weren't taking steroids necessarily. They were popping Benny's and Greenies.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Or Dexa mil right, which was a drug a choice.
And this was kind of before the era of widespread
steroid uses.
Speaker 6 (16:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
So one thing we absolutely want to do in the
exploration of this story is established that, yeah, Doc Ellis
may have been the only person on the field on LSD,
but that doesn't mean he was the only person on
the field on.
Speaker 5 (17:08):
Drugs in an altered state.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
In an altered state, right, because I mean the thing
about you know, those kinds of amphetamine, this is the
kind of stuff that fighter pilots would take you know,
during World War Two, Hitler.
Speaker 5 (17:19):
Was quite fond of them.
Speaker 4 (17:20):
Not to equate baseball players from the sixties with Adolf Hitler,
but it was certainly a tool of war. And sports
are nothing if not organized war where nobody dies, you know.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
That's one of the more popular philosophical interpretations of athleticism
that goes back, you know, into ancient days brandy circuses, right, right,
weren't the chop heads.
Speaker 4 (17:42):
Although people might die of like heatstroke or you know,
some sort of dramatic brain injury over time, but typically
you would not see people carried off of the field
of baseball in a stretcher.
Speaker 1 (17:55):
And there was also a pro cannabis culture at the time, Right,
it was not uncommon for athletes to also smoke weed.
Speaker 5 (18:01):
It's true, And I'm wondering, man, I couldn't quite find this.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
But when did it, Like if this was such common
knowledge or it just seems so obvious. I did see
a trainer saying I don't want this in my locker room.
Don't let me see you doing it. But certainly seemed
quite pervasive. When was it that, like widespread drug testing
became a thing in Major League baseball.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
Yeah, you have to wonder if it was a result
of widespread drug test policies. Maybe players only stopped doing
this stuff when it became a firable or finable offense, right,
other than someone writing a angry letter to you. There's
also a question about how much drug use really has dwindled.
(18:45):
According to an article by Huffington Post written by Andy
Martino in twenty seventeen, current and former baseball players have
said that as many as twenty five percent of Major
League Baseball players have you cocaine? So, is it a
situation where there are fewer altered states? Or is this
situation where the type of drug changes but drug use
(19:08):
still exist.
Speaker 5 (19:09):
Yeah, I'm not quite sure.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I'm not quite sure either. But it's mystifying because as
a fairly square person myself, I would just imagine that
these all have radically different effects.
Speaker 5 (19:21):
Right, I would think so. Ben.
Speaker 4 (19:23):
Here's the thing too about doc ellis he you know,
we talk about the drug use, We talked about him
being a bit of a loose cannon, but he was
described by a lot of his friends in this documentary as.
Speaker 5 (19:34):
Being controlled crazy. They called him controlled crazy.
Speaker 4 (19:38):
He knew how to keep his wild behavior in check
and to do it just enough so that it could
make him money like Dennis Robins style.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Right, So there might be some marketing there, some focused
application of eccentricity or insanity.
Speaker 5 (19:52):
That's right, because you have to think too.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
In those days, especially during this No hitter, African American
pop culture had really infiltrated the mainstream, and Doc was
a flashy guy.
Speaker 5 (20:03):
He had fashion sense.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
He liked to wear big, loud colors and big, you know,
clunky clogs and bell bottoms, and he was like one
of the first guys to wear an earring. Very ahead
of his time culturally, at least in terms of baseball,
because he actually was quoted as saying when talking about
the nineteen seventy one All Star Game that baseball was
(20:26):
pretty backwards when it came to black players. And there
was a controversy because he really liked to stir stuff up,
and in the press he came out and said, you
were not going to put two brothers against each other
in this All Star Game, meaning they had already said
that they were going to start the American League team
(20:46):
with Vida Blue, who was a black pitcher, and Doc
thought that he was going to not get to start
for his league because a guy named Sparky Anderson, a
white guy, was probably going to get that privilege.
Speaker 5 (20:57):
So he got the.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Media all stirred up and was kind of able to
bait them into getting him exactly what he wanted, and
he was He started in the All Star Game, right.
Speaker 5 (21:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (21:07):
And it's strange because looking back in his later interviews
when he sobered up, Ellis said that he did not
remember a lot of these activities. Not only did he
not remember a lot of the details of his legendary
no hitter run, he also said he didn't remember much
(21:30):
of nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy in general.
Speaker 5 (21:33):
Yeah, it's like, what is it Matt LeBlanc and Friends.
Speaker 4 (21:36):
He said he couldn't remember like a whole season of
that show because he was on so many pills the
whole time.
Speaker 5 (21:41):
Yeah, I can't imagine not remembering like a whole year.
Speaker 1 (21:44):
I mean, it could happen for a number of reasons.
I've got I got a few fuzzy ones. I think
I'm going to take us down a really brief side
trail here that listeners from some of the other shows
are familiar with, regardless of what sort of substances you
may or may not take throughout your life. Your memory
is treacherous and works against you, oh for sure, because
every time you're remembering something, you're not remembering the event,
(22:05):
you're remembering the last time you remembered it. So you're
playing a game of telephone with yourself. That's why you
will see even an accounts we've presented in this show.
That's why I'll see people who years later claim that
a myth about them is true, even when it is
demonstrably not the case. And I had a question with Ellis.
(22:28):
I don't know how you feel, Noel, but I believe
the LSD story. I think it's true.
Speaker 5 (22:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
In fact, you can hear Doc himself describe all of
this in a really cool animated short by an outfit
called No Moss that's illustrated by a guy named James
Blagden and has audio from an interview that Ellis did
in two thousand and eight on NPR with Donnelle Alexander
and Niley elll And it's a really really cool video.
(22:56):
And when we play a little clip of that audio
right now, I didn't see the hitters.
Speaker 8 (23:02):
All I could tell was if there was on the
right side or.
Speaker 5 (23:05):
The left side.
Speaker 8 (23:06):
The catcher put tape on his favors so I could
see the signals. We had a rookie on a team
at that particular time named Dave Cash, and he kept
saying after the first inning, he said, you gotta know
no going no hit it.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
I said, yeah, right, yeah, I don't know, Ben, But
hearing him tell that story, it sure sounds like somebody
telling a story they actually believe happened.
Speaker 5 (23:31):
But it's hard to say.
Speaker 4 (23:32):
We also know that he was probably not telling the
truth about the whole Timothy Leary thing. So you know,
I guess the jury is out, but I would like
to believe that it happened.
Speaker 1 (23:40):
So I don't know about you, fellow ridiculous historians, but
I largely believe the bones of this story, the structure
of it. However, I have some pretty pertinent questions, one
being the degree of alteration that applied. If you look
at the timeline of the LSD was taking the way
(24:01):
LSD works, was he taking a larger hit, you know,
was he off his cantalopes or was he experiencing the
equivalent of what Silicon Valley and Burning Man fans would
call a microdose yeah.
Speaker 4 (24:16):
I mean, you know, from hearing him tell it, this
was his second tab that he had taken, and in
those days that stuff probably would have been pretty potent,
So I would lean more towards the what the kids
called trip and balls.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
So this LSD probably would have come from a source
similar to Owlsley, the legendary LSD supplier. And the reason
I'm wondering about the microdosing is because preliminary studies, which
have only occurred quite recently, seemed to indicate that there
may be some sort of relationship between what we call
(24:50):
the flow state and the use of small amounts of hallucinogens,
not just LSD but psilocybin. So without getting two into it,
I have some I have some pretty fascinating studies, but
I'd like to hear from you folks. Do you think
that there was a relationship between the LSD that doc
(25:10):
Ellis consumed. Did it put him in a flow state
similar to the experience people would have when they practice
the use of transcranial direct current simulation or meditation or
what have you, or do you think it was a coincidence?
Do you think he succeeded in spite of this?
Speaker 4 (25:34):
You know, I did hear or I read that that
year the Padres were not particularly good.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
They had lost like nineteen thumping games in that season,
so you know, could have just been a bad performance
on their part.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
That either way, it's it's it's pretty impressive that a
guy could perform that well under the influence of such
a mind altering substance.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Yeah, and Ellis's Ellis's importance and his influence were not
just confined to the field of play. He was influential
and important on the US cultural stage, and other people
acknowledged this right very much.
Speaker 4 (26:11):
So, I mean, we talked about how he was able
to influence that decision of starting two black pitchers against
one another in the nineteen seventy one All Star Game.
Also that year, he went on to win the World
Series with the Pirates, and one of his mentors was
a Puerto Rican player, also black, by the name of
(26:34):
Roberto Clemente, who was himself an outspoken opponent of racism
in baseball, and he and Ellis ended up being on
a version of the Pirates that had nine black players,
and it really kind of was right on this turning
point of culture where black culture became much more mainstream
(26:56):
like we talked about earlier, and players on the team
talk about this being a historic thing and just being
about the fact that everyone was fantastic baseball players. So
he really helped turn that conversation around to the point
where he actually got a very important letter from Jackie Robinson.
And actually here's a clip of Doc reading a bit
(27:18):
of this letter from that documentary called No No.
Speaker 6 (27:21):
I read your coments in our paper the last few
days and wanted you to know how much I appreciate
your courage and honesty. In my opinion, progress for today's
players will only come from this kind of dedication.
Speaker 5 (27:35):
I'm sure.
Speaker 6 (27:35):
Also you know some of the possible consequences. The news media,
while knowing full well you're right and honest, will use
every means to get back at you. That will be
times when you will ask yourself, is it worth it all?
I can only say, Doc, it is, And even though
you will want to yield, in the long run, your
(27:58):
own feeling of yourself will be most important. So I'd
have to be left alone.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
So he goes on to say, try to get more
players to understand your views and you will find great support.
You have made a real contribution. I surely hope your
great ability continues. That ability will determine the success of
your dedication and honesty. I again appreciate what you were doing.
Continued success, Jackie Robinson, and you can read the full
(28:26):
letter on various sites online. Just search for Jackie Robinson
and Doc Ellis. This leads us to perhaps one of
the most important points of the story, which is the following.
Speaker 5 (28:41):
It is very easy, it.
Speaker 1 (28:42):
Is tempting, and it is guess fun to think of
doc Ellis solely as a guy who said, I started
having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard
Nixon was the home played umpire. I thought I was
pitching a baseball to Jimmy Hendricks and so on. But
that is a mischaracterization. We are defining an entire person
(29:03):
by one afternoon in their life. And as Brittany de
la Cretaz argues in a Rolling Stone article, how Doc Ellis,
player who pitched a no hitter on LSD, is misremembered,
it is better, and more importantly, it is more accurate
to remember him as an outspoken advocate not just for
(29:25):
racial equality but also for sobriety. Doc Ellis retired from
baseball in nineteen eighty and he didn't have some egregious
injury that rendered him physically incapable playing the game. According
to him, he lost interest in the game and in
that same year he entered rehab. He stayed for forty
(29:47):
days at a location in Wickenberg, Arizona, known as the Meadows.
And it wasn't until nineteen eighty four that he revealed
he had pitched this no hitter under the influence of
LSD and once achieving sobriety, he spent the rest of
his life helping other people escape drug addiction, which is commendable,
(30:13):
you know. And he spent twenty eight years doing this.
Speaker 5 (30:17):
Yeah, he was no joke about it either.
Speaker 4 (30:19):
I mean he brought that same bravado and intensity that
he brought to the game and that he used to
not take any crap from anybody in terms of the
way he dealt with racism. He brought that same energy
to helping people escape their demons and their addictions and
not taking no for an answer and not putting up
(30:42):
with anyone making excuses for themselves.
Speaker 5 (30:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (30:45):
And he had worked as a counselor in Beverly Hills.
He had worked in jails and institutions and juvenile detention centers,
And you know, you kind of have to wonder, and
I don't know what whether there's an answer to this,
but you kind of have to wonder why, out of
the almost three decades of work he did helping people
(31:07):
achieve sobriety, he is still known for one, granted, one
amazing game, but one LSD influenced game in nineteen seventy.
I don't know what the answer is.
Speaker 5 (31:21):
I mean, from his own mouth.
Speaker 4 (31:23):
Apparently one of his favorite phrases around the house was
f baseball. He apparently, according to this fantastic ESPN article,
felt very used up and abused by it, having started
at it at such a young age, and despite achieving
such a great success, it being a very big part
(31:44):
of his young adult life that possibly led to some
of these substance abuse problems to help deal with pain
that he had in his arm from throwing the ball
so hard all the time, from traveling around, being constantly
on the road, feeling a little uprooted and isolated. And
these are his own words from the documentary, So you know,
(32:07):
I could see how that would be a complicated relationship.
It's something that gave him much success and accolades, but
he never played a game sober.
Speaker 5 (32:17):
He did try to one time.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
In nineteen seventy three, gave it.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
A shot and started warming up in the bullpen, only
to realize that he had quote forgotten how to throw.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
It's interesting because it ties into something that people call
state dependent learning.
Speaker 5 (32:31):
Have you heard of this?
Speaker 7 (32:32):
I have.
Speaker 1 (32:32):
It's the idea that the substances influencing your body when
you are learning or engaging in a certain skill then
have an effect on your performance and that skill. So,
for instance, a more wholesome version of this would be
the idea that when you drink coffee and you're studying something,
(32:55):
then you are going to be more likely to successfully
recall it when you are drinking coffee again, right, that's
a very at base explanation, but it can extend to
other substances as well. Oh, I should also mention he
was he was an advocate for the treatment of sickle
cell that's right.
Speaker 4 (33:15):
He was able to get funding in somewhere in the
neighborhood of one hundred and forty million dollars for that
disease that was largely misunderstood and a huge problem for
the African American community.
Speaker 1 (33:27):
In nineteen eighty ninety sort of returned to baseball when
he served as a player and coach for the Saint
Petersburg Pelicans of the Senior Professional Baseball Association, but that was,
I think more for the love of the game.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
He also had a little stint in acting, I think,
where he was in a movie with Michael Keaton.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Yeah, Gung Ho, which was nineteen eighty six, directed by
Ron Howard. In two thousand and seven, Doc Ellis was
diagnosed with cirrhosis and was placed on the list for
a liver transplant.
Speaker 4 (33:58):
And he did pass away two thousand and eight because
unfortunately he had already sustained some damage to his heart
and it was too risky to do a liver transplant.
And Yeah, you can't help it think that that liver
problems like that were the result of a lifetime of
that substance abuse. Despite having dealt with that and been
(34:18):
a huge beacon of hope for others that we're dealing
with those problems, that stuff does catch up to you.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
It's it's absolutely true, and it's a shame that he
was not around to see No No, a documentary which
came out in twenty fourteen. A few years after his passing,
he was interred at the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.
And although Doc Ellis may have physically left us today,
(34:45):
his legacy continues on. And it's not just a story
about again an amazing afternoon in baseball. It's a story
about a man who struggled first to save himself, then
to improve society, and then ultimately to save others that
(35:08):
he met in similar situations. That's beautiful, it really is,
and we hope that you think so too. This is
a fun one to look into.
Speaker 4 (35:16):
Cannot recommend enough that ESPN article from Outside the Lines
called the Long Strange Trip of Doc Ellis, Meet the
Man behind Baseball's most Psychedelic Myth. You can find that
online in full by Patrick Ruby. It's also got some
fantastic photos and illustrations by Joe Chiardello. Also cannot recommend
(35:36):
enough the documentary No No, a documentary.
Speaker 5 (35:41):
You can stream that on Amazon Prime. I think it's
like a couple bucks.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
And well worth it. It's money well spent in the meantime.
Although the podcast is over for today, if you have
a hankering to encounter more history of the Ridiculous variety.
You can find us on Instagram, you can find us
on faceboo book, you can find us on Twitter. We'd
especially like to recommend our community page, Ridiculous Historians, where
you can interact with your fellow listeners, all of whom,
(36:10):
as far as I have found, are witty, funny, and insightful.
Speaker 4 (36:14):
It's true memes a plenty, a lot of fun to
be had there, so check it out and also do
us a solid and leave us a nice review on
iTunes because it makes us feel good and our tummies.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
And stay tuned when we return very soon in our
next episode to crack the case for a question we
might not have known you had. When did Fido become
a stand in name for dogs?
Speaker 5 (36:37):
Here boy, here boy, while you're.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Waiting for a dog that heard that through your headphones
to run towards you. We would like to thank superproducer
Casey Pegrom. We would like to thank our research assistant
Christopher Hasiotis.
Speaker 4 (36:51):
We'd like to thank Alex Williams, friend of the show,
who composed our theme, and most importantly, we'd like to
thank you for hanging out with.
Speaker 5 (36:58):
Us and being a lot of fun. We'll see you
next time
Speaker 4 (37:05):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Noel Brown
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