Chance Beckmann

Baseball has never been a sport of sobriety. As early as 1889, there were widely known reports of players doping up. Pitcher Pud Galvin got caught taking faux performance-enhancing drugs consisting of guinea pig and dog testicles. In the mid-1920s, Babe Ruth, following the same science as Galvin, missed 41 games due to injecting himself with sheep testicle extract and disguised it as a “stomach ache.” Ruth was also a known alcoholic who reportedly drank during games in the dugout. In the 1940s, players returning home from WWII came back with knowledge of amphetamine and its benefits and subsequently applied that knowledge to their craft. So when acid swept the nation in the 1960s, it wasn’t a surprise that MLB players decided to partake in the trend.
One notable participant was 25-year-old pitcher Dock Ellis. Ellis was an above-average pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, coincidentally the same team as Galvin. Ellis was a part-time irascible, a part-time samaritan and a full-time user. Because of his very quick temper, Ellis fought a stadium security guard after failing to produce proper identification and publicly slandered team management when the hotel beds weren’t long enough for his 6’3” frame. The Samaritan side of Ellis appeared in front of the Senate campaigning for legislation to help fight sickle-cell anemia and ironically became a drug counselor for prisoners after his retirement from baseball. Ellis never pitched a game while sober, as he was always under the influence of a mixture of drugs.
There were a few drugs, however, that even Ellis steered clear of while pitching, typically sticking to amphetamine and cannabis. One particular drug he avoided was LSD, and he had never pitched a game on acid, at least before Friday, June 12, 1970. On that fateful Friday, versus the San Diego Padres, he hadn’t even meant to.
On Wednesday, two days before the game, Ellis flew to Los Angeles to visit a friend, popping a tab upon his arrival. Ellis, his friend and his friend’s girlfriend all partook in copious amounts of narcotics, not stopping until they fell asleep. Ellis awoke after what he thought was a short nap and popped another tab thinking it was Thursday. It was not Thursday.
Ellis had lost track of time. It was 2 p.m. Friday. The first pitch for the game was scheduled for 6 p.m. and Ellis was in another city, inebriated. Ellis caught a 3:30 p.m. flight to San Diego and made it to the stadium just seconds before the game started.
From 1900-1969, there were 87,396 baseball games played; only 132 games featured a pitcher that threw a no-hitter. Ellis became the 133rd while pitching to who he thought was ‘60s guitarist and recently deceased Jimi Hendrix and current president Richard Nixon. Ultimately, Ellis walked more batters than he retired and only got the no-hitter because he was bailed out by spectacular plays from infielders. However, this does not take away from the fact that Ellis completed one of the hardest accomplishments in North American sports, all while stupefied and hallucinating on LSD.