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OTL: The Long, Strange Trip of Dock Ellis

Originally Published: August 24, 2012
By Patrick Hruby

"Get to the f---ing stadium. I got to pitch." Decades later, Dock Ellis remembered it like this: sitting in a taxi outside the San Diego airport, running late for work, tripping on acid.

So yeah, maybe the words aren't verbatim.

It was a Friday. That much is certain. June 12, 1970. Three years after psychedelic Pied Piper Timothy Leary invited America to "Turn on, tune in and drop out." Four years before Richard Nixon's resignation marked an inglorious denouement to the counterculture era. The middle of things. A purple haze. The perfect moment for the first and only known no-hitter in major league history pitched under the influence of lysergic acid diethylamide, thrown by the first and only player in major league history to inspire both a biography penned by a future American poet laureate and a seminal article in High Times.

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