Dock Ellis and his no-hitter, 50 years later
50 years after Pirate’s no-hitter, his story resonates
His story resonates today as someone who spoke out about racism in baseball when few other players would.
On Friday, the 50th anniversary of Dock Ellis’ no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates, his claim about having pitched the game under the influence of LSD remains a matter of debate. It also has obscured another part of Ellis’ baseball career that resonates strongly today.
At a time when most other African-American players shied away from controversy, Ellis was outspoken when it came to race and equality.
“He spoke out on a lot of things that people didn’t want to hear,” said Dave Cash, who played with Ellis for the Pirates in the 1970s, comparing Ellis to former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick. “That was Dock. He never bit his tongue about how he felt about the situations that were going on in this country.’’
Ellis’ sister, Sandra Toney, said she found herself thinking about him while watching the memorial for George Floyd, the African-American man who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer May 25 and whose death set off protests across America and around the world. Ellis died in 2008 of liver disease at the age of 63.
“I think he would have been very engaged (politically),’’ Toney told USA TODAY. “Because he talked about the injustices and the racism when he first started playing baseball because he really wasn’t accustomed to that, being from California. And going to places where you know they didn’t want blacks, he would kind of tell me about it.”
The week of the 1971 All-Star Game, Vida Blue, an African-American pitcher for the Oakland A’s, was set to start for the American League. Ellis, a candidate to start for the National League, told reporters that NL manager Sparky Anderson would not select him because there’s no way baseball would allow two black pitchers to start an All-Star Game.
The comment generated headlines across the country, and Ellis was named starter.
Jackie Robinson later sent Ellis a handwritten letter that in part read, “I read your comments in our paper the past few days and wanted you to know how much I appreciated your courage and honesty. In my opinion progress for today’s players will only come from this kind of dedication . ... You have made a real contribution.”
Gregarious and carefree, Ellis provoked as much laughter as controversy — and sometimes both. He took pride in occasionally being referred to as the “Muhammad Ali of baseball’’ and once showed up at Wrigley Field with his hair in curlers.
“I was anti-management because I didn’t want anyone to tell me how to dress, who to date,’’ Ellis said in “No No:
A Dockumentary,” a 2014 film about Ellis’ life. “I remember one time I had my hair braided, and they wanted to know what is that about? I said don’t ask me about my braids. Get out of my face.’’
During the 1971 World Series, when the Pirates played the Baltimore Orioles, the players checked in to the team hotel and soon realized they were assigned rooms with twin beds.
“Here it was postseason play and you bring your wives and then everybody goes upstairs to their room and they come back downstairs because there were twin beds,’’ said Al Oliver, a member of that Pirates team. “And Dock comes down, everybody else comes down.
“You know, you at least want the queen- or the king-sized bed. And I remember Dock said that his bed was too small. Well, so did everybody else. But Dock made headlines.’’
Because Ellis made sure to voice his complaints to the media.
During his 12 years in the majors, Ellis was 138-119 with a 3.46 ERA and won a World Series title as a member of the Pirates in 1971. But his most notable accomplishment was the no-hitter.
“He had electric stuff, but he was a little wild,’’ said Nate Colbert, who was batting cleanup for the San Diego Padres that night and walked twice, struck out once and lined out to center in four plate appearances. “But I cannot verify
that he was under the influence.’’
Steve Blass, a pitcher for the Pirates that year, told USA TODAY last week, “The big question was did he actually pitch the no-hitter on the LSD? I think only Dock knows.”
There’s another question: Did Ellis get the drug from Timothy Leary, a famed LSD advocate who died in 1999?
That’s what Ellis said, according to Terry Cannon, founder of the Baseball Reliquary that in 1999 inducted Ellis into its Shrine of Eternals, which honors men and women whose impact on the game transcended statistics. The Baseball Reliquary is a nonprofit, educational organization that is based in Southern California and dedicated to fostering an appreciation of American art and culture through the context of baseball history.
“(Ellis) said that Leary had reached out to him because he heard, I guess, through the grapevine that Dock took hallucinogenics and different kinds of recreational drugs,’’ Cannon said. “That (Leary) was interested in having Dock report back to him about his experiences in pitching while under the influence of LSD.
“You know, Dock was kind of a storyteller, and he’d say different things to different people and whether that was true or not, I have no way of knowing.’’
Though the Baseball Reliquary has no brick-and-mortar museum, its collections of artifacts — which Cannon said include the curlers Ellis wore when he created a stir with the Pirates — are put on display during exhibits throughout the year.
In retrospect, Cannon said, Ellis was an ideal member of the Baseball Reliquary’s first class of inductees.
“He wasn’t inducted because he threw a no-hitter under the influence of LSD,’’ Cannon said. “We inducted him because he was an outspoken proponent for blacks in baseball at a time when very few African-American ballplayers were willing to speak their mind.’’