By Bill Coleman
On June 12, 1970, a pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates threw a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres. That sentence alone would not have made history. No-hitters are rare, but baseball has seen hundreds of them. What happened that afternoon, however, transformed a remarkable achievement into one of the sport’s most enduring legends.
The pitcher was Dock Ellis.
And according to Ellis himself, he threw the game while under the influence of LSD.
A Phone Call Changes Everything
Ellis was one of baseball’s most colorful personalities. Talented, outspoken, and fearless, he pitched with a swagger that made him impossible to ignore.
In June 1970, the Pirates were in the middle of a road trip. Ellis believed he had a day off and was visiting friends in Los Angeles. During the visit, he took LSD, expecting a leisurely afternoon.
Several hours later, a friend checked the newspaper schedule and delivered shocking news: Ellis was scheduled to start that evening in San Diego!
Panicked, he scrambled to reach the airport. By the time he arrived at the ballpark, he later claimed he was still experiencing the effects of the drug.
“Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!” – Henry James (1884)
Pitching Through a Psychedelic Fog
Ellis later described the game as a blur of distorted colors, shifting shapes, and missing details. He said he struggled to see the catcher and often aimed toward what he believed was home plate rather than what he could clearly see. In interviews years later, Ellis recalled the batters sometimes appeared larger than life and that the strike zone seemed to move.
The box score reflected the chaos. Ellis walked eight batters and hit one. He constantly worked from trouble and rarely appeared in complete control. Yet somehow, the Padres could not record a hit. As inning after inning passed, the impossible became reality. When the final out settled into a fielder’s glove, Ellis had completed one of the strangest no-hitters in baseball history.
Fact, Myth and Memory
The story’s most fascinating aspect is that it rests largely on Ellis’s own account. At the time of the game, no one in the ballpark reported noticing any unusual behavior. Teammates simply saw a pitcher battling through a wild, but effective outing.
Years later, Ellis openly discussed his drug use and repeatedly maintained he had been under the influence of LSD during the game.
Some historians have debated details of the timeline and whether the effects may have been fading by game time. Nevertheless, Ellis never backed away from the story. He embraced it as part of his complicated legacy.
The Cultural Legacy
The LSD no-hitter has inspired books, documentaries, artwork and countless retellings of the story. Perhaps the most famous modern tribute is the animated short film based on Ellis’s own narration, which introduced a new generation of fans to the tale (See Extra Innings!!! below).
For baseball enthusiasts, the game occupies a unique place in the sport’s folklore. It sits somewhere between documented history and larger-than-life legend, a story so improbable that it feels almost fictional. Yet the official record remains unchanged for one of the most unbelievable afternoons baseball has ever seen.
More Than a Baseball Curiosity, Dock Became a Symbol of Baseball’s Colorful Past
Reducing Dock Ellis to a single game misses the larger story. He won 138 major league games, was selected to the All-Star team, and helped lead Pittsburgh to a championship in 1971.
Ellis was married four times. His son, Dock Phillip Ellis III (Trey), played college basketball at California State University, Bakersfield. Ellis stopped using alcohol and other drugs in 1980, when his son was an infant. Later in life, he became an advocate for helping athletes overcome substance abuse.
Ellis fought for players’ rights, including the right to free agency. Jackie Robinson credited him with trying to further the rights of African American players, but warned him that he said too much. In 1971, Ellis testified before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Public Health about his experiences with sickle cell anemia, and later worked with people who had the disease and raised money for sickle cell research.
Ellis was inducted into the Baseball Reliquary Shrine of the Eternals in 1999.
He was diagnosed with cirrhosis in 2007 and was placed on the list for a liver transplant. Although he had no health insurance, friends from his baseball career helped pay his medical bills. However, Ellis suffered heart damage in his last weeks of life, which made a transplant impossible.
Ellis died on December 19th, 2008, at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center due to his liver ailment. He is interred at Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California. His personal story is the subject of the 2014 documentary film “No No: A Dockumentary“.
His life was messy, complicated, and deeply human—qualities that make his story resonate decades later.
Dock Ellis’s No-Hitter Line (June 12, 1970)
- 9 innings pitched
- 0 hits allowed
- 8 walks
- 1 hit batter
- 6 strikeouts
- 1 no-hitter
More than fifty years later, it remains one of the most extraordinary and debated stories in the history of Major League Baseball.
Extra Innings!!!
Let’s go to the video!