NPF: ACCOMPLISHMENT

Posted on | by Ed

Note that I did not give this the "skip this if you hate sports" tag. Because this is something everyone can enjoy.

If you enjoy sports – or maybe even if you don't – there are moments in which you realize that you've seen perfection. I'm talking about things you see and immediately know you'll never see anything like it again. Tiger Woods winning the Masters by 12 strokes. Nadia Comaneci in Montreal. Bob Beamon's long jump. Jordan scoring 63 over 4 Hall of Famers in the Boston Garden. Vince Young in the Rose Bowl. Usain Bolt leaving a vapor trail. McEnroe vs. Connors at Wimbledon. Kerry Wood's 20 K's. Lemieux scores 5 goals in a game…5 different ways. Some feats are so amazing that they become legends as soon as they happen.

Records are made to be broken. But I know one feat that will never be repeated, and it stands as the single most impressive thing ever accomplished on an athletic field: Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates throwing a no-hitter whacked out of his mind on acid. Some versions of this story are bowdlerized to suggest that he was "hung over" but make no mistake, the man was tripping balls. Check out this award-winning animated short (seriously, it made the film festival rounds) depicting the event while a recording of an interview with Ellis (who passed away a few years ago) as narration:

Click through to watch in HD.

Baseball aficionados use the phrase "effectively wild" to describe a pitching performance where the batters are baffled because the pitcher himself doesn't have much of an idea where the ball is going. Ellis threw one of the strangest no-hitters ever, walking eight batters, hitting two, and throwing over 150 pitches. I imagine the batters were less concerned with hitting and more concerned with defending themselves from the rocket-armed, bedraggled wildman with unfocused pupils hurling a rock hard object at them at 99 mph.

Salut, Dock Ellis. If they gave out gold medals for being the best possible kind of crazy, they might have to name it after you.

29 thoughts on “NPF: ACCOMPLISHMENT”

  • Warmbowski says:

    Looking into some more info on Doc Ellis, I came across this entry on snope.com:

    In 1974, feeling that his teammates had lost their aggressiveness and were too easily intimidated, Ellis decided to put on a show against the Cincinnati Reds (who had come from behind to defeat the Pirates for the 1972 National League pennant on a run-scoring wild pitch in the bottom of the ninth inning of the final playoff game). In a May 1 start against the Reds – having announced before the game that "We gonna get down. We gonna do the do. I’m going to hit these motherfuckers." – Ellis opened the contest by drilling leadoff hitter Pete Rose in the ribs; hitting the next batter, Joe Morgan, in the side; and then plunking Dan Driessen in the back to load the bases. Although clean-up hitter Tony Perez managed to dodge Ellis' pitches long enough to draw a walk before being hit, Dock aimed his next two offerings at Cincinnati catcher Johnny Bench's head, whereupon he was unceremoniously yanked from the game by Pittsburgh manager Danny Murtaugh.

    So, the message to the young wannabe MLB pitchers out there is, if you want to throw a no hitter, don't just establish your fast ball, but also make sure to establish the notion that you will hit any 'mutha-fucker' if you damn well feel like it. Then go out to the mound obviously high, or drunk, or something.

  • RosaLux says:

    You might make an interesting analogy to Michael Jordan's famous "flu" game. That's an idea for a post: sports players performing heroically while physically debilitated.

  • Ed says:

    Dock's no-hitter and the Jordan flu game are kinda apples to oranges. The flu game is typical MJ superhero-dom (I know, boooring!). Basically, it's what you expect from the modern day GOAT (Greatest of All Time). Sure, it was amazing to watch–I kept expecting him to keel over on the court and pass out–but in the end, it was just another episode of MJ being legendary. Nothing we haven't seen before from that guy . . . move along . . .

    By contrast, the LSD no-hitter is a unique creature in sports history, which, to me, makes it so much more interesting. A lot of guys have played sick or hurt, and some have even played really well (e.g. Dirk Nowitzki with a broken finger), but I can't think of anyone else who had a good game on acid. I suspect a lot of guys have played basketball high, but that's an entirely different beast.

    In the end, I like the Acid game better, because it's funny, as demonstrated by the short. Not awe-inspiring, not motivational, just good, kinda dirty fun. Baseball is actually a really, really hard game to be good at, so the idea that someone accomplished one of the greatest individual feats possible in baseball *while on acid* is almost unthinkable. Also, as a side note, no coach is ever gonna use the Acid game to berate some kid who has a fever and doesn't want to practice. No motivational speaker is going to use it at a corporate seminar to illustrate teamwork, or going the extra mile, or whatever. So the Acid game will (probably) remain free from the dual evils of corporatism and sports jackass-ery, which is another reason it's great.

  • Daniel says:

    I read in "The Undergound Baseball Encyclopedia" about Dock Ellis. He claims he viewed the home plate umpire at one point in the game as Richard Nixon.

  • Daniel says:

    Who is the craziest baseball player of all time: Bill "Spaceman" Lee, Dock Ellis, Jimmy Piersall, or Ty Cobb?

  • c u n d gulag says:

    Daniel,
    I depends on how you define crazy.
    There have been a lot of 'crazy players over the years. In particular in the late 19th, early 20th centuries.
    There have been MLB players who murdered – one guy slashed his wife's throat, then his own. Another killed this wife and kids with an axe. Another guy tried to wrestle with the pilot for control of a small plane he was on. That's some 'serious' crazy.

    Cobb was a violent, insecure racist, who border on being a sociopath – yet he sent money to destitute teammates later in life – sometimes anonymously because he thought if they knew it came from him they wouldn't take it.

    Of the harmless but fun crazies, Peirsall had some real issues, but was harmless – doing things like running the bases backwards.
    Bill Lee was a genuine hoot, but also a very good pitcher.
    Dock was kind of like that too, but with an awareness of racism and civil rights for blacks. So he was fun and serious at the same time. If you can find it, there was a great biography written about him in the mid-late '70's –

  • c u n d gulag says:

    Shit, half of my comment disappeared!

    Teke TWO!!!

    The book was called “Dock Ellis in the Country of Baseball,” and was written by Donald Hall, who later the poet laureate of the United States.
    Ellis came to the Yankees in the deal for Willie Randolph. He had a pretty good '76 season. But in this first start in '77 he gave up some rediculous amount of runs in the first inning without getting anyone out. That Sunday the NY Times had him at the bottom of the pitchers ratings with a little infinity sign – a 2 dimensional mobius strip. I still remember that because it cracked me up.
    He became a journeyman pitcher on several teams, one of them being the Texas Rangers, where Ellis led a player insurrection against manager Billy Hunter's authoritarian style, declaring that Hunter "may be Hitler, but he ain't making no lampshade out of me." One of the best labor v. management statements ever.
    Forgotten in all of this goofiness is that he could be, and often was, one hell of a pitcher. He finished 198-119, with a 3.46 ERA. Ellis was also the gut who gave up the TITANIC HR in the All Star Game to Reggie Jackson. That was SOME F*CKING SHOT!

    My personal favorite?
    Mark "The Bird" Fydrich. He was a harmless nut who talked to the baseball and manicured the mound on his hands and knees. And he was one of the all time great 'one year wonders' – as a rookie. He was THE sensation in the game that one summer. But his arm went bad the next season, and soon so did he from the scene. Tragically he died a few years ago.
    But he was a gentle loon who was eccentric. Sure he talked to the baseball. And sure he manicured the mound on national TV. But he loved the game that I love. And that's my kind of crazy!

    – I hope you didn't think my posting the rest of my orinigal was a waste of your time.

  • c u n d gulag says:

    Black_Rose,
    He wasn't the first, and I doubt he'll be the last.
    David Well also had plenty of really bad performances hung over.

    I remember when he was traded for Roger "Who, Me? CHEAT!NEVER!!!" Clemens, David Cone said that plenty of bartenders will lose their jobs now that Wells was gone because bars all over NY City were going to shut down without him to keep them in business.
    :-)

  • Hawes says:

    When will Bud Selig get Performance Enhancing Drugs like LSD, meth and heroin out of America's pastime? What will we tell the children?

  • Rick Massimo says:

    The "your call cannot be completed as dialed" moment at 2:34 of that video is completely priceless.

  • BillCinSD says:

    Rube Waddell was the craziest guy that played in the majors. He left games to go chase firetrucks. Fred Clarke got him off his game by talking about a dog he would give Rube after the season

    In 1903 Rube "began that year (1903) sleeping in a firehouse in Camden, New Jersey, and ended it tending bar in a saloon in Wheeling, West Virginia. In between those events he won 22 games for the Philadelphia Athletics, played left end for the Business Men's Rugby Football Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, toured the nation in a melodrama called The Stain of Guilt, courted, married and became separated from May Wynne Skinner of Lynn, Massachusetts, saved a woman from drowning, accidentally shot a friend through the hand, and was bitten by a lion"

    Marty Bergen may have the lead in baseball bad crazy as he did the old murder suicide thing — but this did likely cause him to get some Hall of Fame votes

  • acer says:

    Dock was the HST of baseball. Or, at the least, a marvelous example of the weird turning pro.

  • Jim says:

    Fabulous video Ed…thanks for posting, needed the laugh. Truth is also funnier than fiction I suppose.

  • Shelton Blake says:

    I don't know what was going on, but I can't help thinking that had Dr. Marcus Bachmann been around at the time, he could have done something for that man.

  • Robert says:

    The reference to Dexamyl jogged my memory – that was the prescription amphetamine that Ayn Rand was on for about twenty years. Wonder what SHE could have done with a couple tabs of good acid.

  • Atticus Dogsbody says:

    Not being a seppo sucks. Other than the Olympics, exciting sports events never happen outside of the U.S.

  • bpasinko says:

    I doubt many baseball players have played on acid, but I suspect several of them were high on cocaine in the 80s. It's not out of the question that there is a player who achieved some monumental feat on coke, given how big of a problem it was at that time period. Tim Raines, Keith Hernandez and Paul Molitor were more or less addicted and they achieved some amazing things on the field.

    Still, that's not remotely close to pitching a no-hitter, tripping on acid.

  • Fifth Dentist says:

    In college, while playing intramural softball, I pitched a game for my fraternity. I and about five other guys were ripped on acid, and I pitched a no-hitter. My centfielder, who was tripping balls, saved it by a superhuman run up a hill to catch up to a ball that he had no business even getting close to. He claimed he was seeing 50 balls, but he caught the right one.
    Good times, college.

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