It's funny; a few weeks ago I gigged on a commercial and the grips were talking amongst themselves about Doc Ellis and how he pitched that no-hitter on LSD; I was able to fill in some blanks for them thanks in big part to your post a while back. One of them said that his pitching on LSD that day was actually a gaffe in which he thought he was scheduled to be off that day, but by some unremarkable circumstance he was told the day before he was actually going to pitch; by that time he had already decided to do his thing and had already gotten high.
There was also some theorizing that the LSD actually enhanced his sensory perception to ESP-like quality, but I doubt that; if such were the case, would he or anyone else not experiment further and continue to use it at whatever opportunity or need presented itself? The same argument can be applied to steroids to a degree, but I'm not prepared to make that one way or the other...
It seems that Dock epitomized coolness. The no-no on LSD gets all the press, but he seemed to be a genuinely cool guy from what I read in his book "Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball."
I wish he had spent more time with the Yanks, to see how he would've interacted with the Bronx Zoo (he had already gotten into it with Steinbrenner a couple of times, IIRC), and certainly after Reggie joined the team (who Dock nailed with an intentional beanball when he was with the O's).
It's funny; a few weeks ago I gigged on a commercial and the grips were talking amongst themselves about Doc Ellis and how he pitched that no-hitter on LSD; I was able to fill in some blanks for them thanks in big part to your post a while back. One of them said that his pitching on LSD that day was actually a gaffe in which he thought he was scheduled to be off that day, but by some unremarkable circumstance he was told the day before he was actually going to pitch; by that time he had already decided to do his thing and had already gotten high.
There was also some theorizing that the LSD actually enhanced his sensory perception to ESP-like quality, but I doubt that; if such were the case, would he or anyone else not experiment further and continue to use it at whatever opportunity or need presented itself? The same argument can be applied to steroids to a degree, but I'm not prepared to make that one way or the other...
It seems that Dock epitomized coolness. The no-no on LSD gets all the press, but he seemed to be a genuinely cool guy from what I read in his book "Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball."
I wish he had spent more time with the Yanks, to see how he would've interacted with the Bronx Zoo (he had already gotten into it with Steinbrenner a couple of times, IIRC), and certainly after Reggie joined the team (who Dock nailed with an intentional beanball when he was with the O's).