Eoin Butler: writer, journalist and Mayoman of the Year

Tripping Along The Ledge


Blog

GREAT MOMENTS IN DRUGS: JUNE 12, 1970

dth=”560″ height=”340″>
Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis throws a no-hitter – the baseball equivalent of a 147 break, as far as I can tell (see after the jump) – while tripping on acid.
From Wikipedia:

A no-hitter… is a baseball game in which one team has no hits… A pitcher who prevents the opposing team from achieving a hit is said to have “thrown a no-hitter”. Throwing a no-hitter is a rare accomplishment for a pitcher or pitching staff: only 263 have been thrown in Major League Baseball history since 1875, an average of about two per year…

Ellis later recounted:

I can only remember bits and pieces of the game… I was zeroed in on the (catcher’s) glove, but I didn’t hit the glove too much… The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate…

November 14th, 2009.

4 Responses to “GREAT MOMENTS IN DRUGS: JUNE 12, 1970”

  1. Colin Says:

    Enjoyable animation recounting the moment. These days they’d probably see LSD as a “performance enhancing drug”.

    Ellis later in life became a drug counsellor btw.

  2. golden graham Says:

    Why wasn’t I alive in the seventies? No one does stuff like this anymore or if they did they’d be sent straight to rehab. Good times.

  3. Adrian Russell · Performance-enhancing drugs Says:

    […] I’ve come across in a few places this week (Sport is a TV Show, Tripping Along the Edge, Funny or Die are […]

  4. Performance-enhancing drugs | Journalist.ie Says:

    […] I’ve come across in a few places this week (Sport is a TV Show, Tripping Along the Edge, Funny or Die are […]

Leave a Comment