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CLASSIC: Dock Ellis and the Legend of the LSD No-hitter · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: We have a fascinating, or we hope fascinating classic episode
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: for you ridiculous historians. If you are a fan of baseball,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: if you are a fan of LSD, this is the
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  Speaker 1: episode for you.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's almost like, need we say more?
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: Doc Elis and the Legend of the LSD no Hitter.
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  Speaker 2: Anyone out there that's a sports fan knows how hard
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  Speaker 2: it is for a picture to achieve an entire game
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  Speaker 2: where nobody hits the ball that they have thrown. Not
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  Speaker 2: to mention while tripping on a heavy psychedelic.
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  Speaker 3: So joyed us as we dive into this thoroughly ridiculous,
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  Speaker 3: absolutely true story of how Doc Ellis became a beat
• 0:47
  Speaker 3: me here Max, A fucking legend.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio Quick Bait and Switch.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: At the top of the show, Ladies and Gentlemen, friends
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: and neighbors, you may have thought you are tuning into
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: a podcast, but for the moment you are at a
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  Speaker 1: baseball game. Hear the crowd, smell the popcorn, the hot dogs,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: the distant crack of a baseball bat, the stale urine,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: the sale you're the beer that somehow smells both like
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: beer and stale.
• 1:45
  Speaker 4: Urine, sort of a milans. Really, it all sort of
• 1:47
  Speaker 4: comes together. And now, what's the word miasma?
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: Miasthma, A collage for the senses, a nose collage, a
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: cavalcade of experience.
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  Speaker 5: Hello, my name is Ben, my name is Nolan. We
• 1:59
  Speaker 5: love words.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: We love words almost as much as we love our
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  Speaker 1: super producer, Casey batter Up pegrum.
• 2:09
  Speaker 6: Noel.
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  Speaker 1: I was wondering, now that we're at this hypothetical baseball game.
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: Were you much of a baseballer?
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, I played the outfield when I was like in
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  Speaker 4: elementary school, but I was you know, I was a
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  Speaker 4: turd rest of development. Yeah, I was no good and
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  Speaker 4: I was just looking around, you know, just smelling the pee,
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  Speaker 4: not really being a very effective part of the team.
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  Speaker 1: Wait, you were in a stale urine soaked little league,
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: and they all they all smell like that, Ben, from
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  Speaker 1: the little leagues to the minor leagues to the major leagues,
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: they all smell like p Well, we did grow up.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: I do love that unintentional rume. We did grow up
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  Speaker 1: in different towns. I associated with the smell of peanuts.
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  Speaker 1: I was also an outfield guy, so maybe.
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  Speaker 4: That's when I met pe nuts. Peanuts, go, I'm sorry,
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  Speaker 4: I was confused.
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  Speaker 5: No, no, no, not at all.
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  Speaker 1: So it's strange because one of the one of the
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  Speaker 1: most beautiful series of memories that I have from growing
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  Speaker 1: up is that in the early nineties you could get very,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: very cheap field side seats, and that was my primary
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: informative experience with baseball until we started doing Ridiculous History
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: and exploring some of the strange baseball stories, most particularly
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: Curse of the Kernel. But even if you haven't played baseball,
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: or even if you hate baseball ridiculous historians, you have
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  Speaker 1: probably experienced one of the most amazing cognitive things that
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: humans are capable of experiencing.
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  Speaker 5: Dropping acid.
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  Speaker 1: I was going to say, flow state. Oh cool, it's
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: one of those too. Yeah. There are many roads to
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  Speaker 1: the rome known as the Flow State Meditation Exercise LSD,
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  Speaker 1: and today today our story encounters all three baseball LSD
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  Speaker 1: and the flow state. It's true, at least it is
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  Speaker 1: commonly accepted as true. Right, So, Noel, could you could
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  Speaker 1: you set the scene? Could you take us there?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, I will take you there.
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  Speaker 4: It was a Friday on June the twelfth of nineteen seventy,
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  Speaker 4: right on the tail end of you know, the rule
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  Speaker 4: in the sixties, that's not what they were called.
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  Speaker 5: That was the twenties. What were the sixties. What's a
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  Speaker 5: good adjective for the sixties?
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  Speaker 4: The vibrant, the vibrant, unbridled, unhinged, tune in, free lawn,
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  Speaker 4: drop out, free love, free, all that stuff. And you know,
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  Speaker 4: a big part of that was a guy named Timothy
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  Speaker 4: Leary who was he worked at Harvard in the laboratories there,
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: but he researched with the effects of psychedelic drugs on
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  Speaker 4: the mind, and he became this kind of Svengali of
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  Speaker 4: the sixties and of psychedelic experiences.
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  Speaker 5: Right, a guru figure. It's true. And there was another
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  Speaker 5: guy named Doc Ellis.
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  Speaker 4: On that day, June twelfth, nineteen seventy, who was a
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  Speaker 4: fantastic pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and he had just
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  Speaker 4: arrived at the stadium in San Diego, California, to be
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  Speaker 4: the starting pitcher for a game against the San Diego Padres.
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  Speaker 1: But here's the problem. He got there just an hour
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  Speaker 1: and a half, ninety minutes before he's supposed to be
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  Speaker 1: on the field, and he is not sober because he's
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  Speaker 1: coming in and he had no idea that he was
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  Speaker 1: supposed to play today. In fact, he has partied to
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  Speaker 1: a cartoonish degree the night before, Right, he's dropped acid.
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  Speaker 1: He drank like a fish, and he woke up the
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  Speaker 1: same day and I think it was about what about
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  Speaker 1: noon that he took another hit of acid.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, he was in Los Angeles, there's his hometown. The
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  Speaker 4: game was in San Diego. He thought he had a
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  Speaker 4: day off. He did have a day off, but he
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  Speaker 4: burned through that day off as you just described. And
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  Speaker 4: then he woke up at around noon after having taken
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  Speaker 4: another hit. And it was a friend, a girlfriend of
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  Speaker 4: one of his childhood friends who he was hanging out
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  Speaker 4: with and then crashed over there with, showed him the newspaper,
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  Speaker 4: the day's newspaper, the sports page more specifically, which said, hey,
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  Speaker 4: you're the starting pitcher for this game that's about to
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  Speaker 4: happen today in San Diego. So he got all the
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  Speaker 4: stuff together, ran the airport while tripping on LSD. Mind,
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  Speaker 4: you caught an afternoon flight and a cab directly to
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  Speaker 4: the stadium.
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  Speaker 1: And here's the there's this great article on ESPN by
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  Speaker 1: Patrick Ruby that explained it this way, and this is
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  Speaker 1: according to doc Ellis himself. He landed in the San
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  Speaker 1: Diego airport. He hopped in a cab outside and all
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  Speaker 1: he said was, Casey, can you beat me on this?
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  Speaker 1: Get to the stadium? I got a pitch, yeah, and
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  Speaker 1: pitch he did.
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  Speaker 4: You know what's funny, I'm thinking about all this, and
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  Speaker 4: I'm thinking about just the stress of going to the
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  Speaker 4: airport in general, and like being on a tight timeline,
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  Speaker 4: being worried about missing your flight, or being worried about
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  Speaker 4: missing your appointment or whatever. Can you imagine that with
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  Speaker 4: the added stress of, you know, being in an altered state.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was thinking about this because you know, stress
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  Speaker 1: can be such a personal thing, you know. I was
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  Speaker 1: wondering how much would it stress him out? To me,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: being late for something is more stressful than going to
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  Speaker 1: an airport. I hate being late for stuff. But regardless
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  Speaker 1: of which way you look at it, compounding that with
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  Speaker 1: an altered state of consciousness, and then also compounding that
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  Speaker 1: with the fact that you are a public performer. You're
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  Speaker 1: an athlete, right, who's going to be performing in crowd.
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  Speaker 1: It's not like you're late to your job as an
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  Speaker 1: archivist in a basement where no one will see you
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  Speaker 1: for eight hours. He was also twenty five years old,
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  Speaker 1: known for his curveball and his partying days. That's another
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  Speaker 1: thing that makes me wonder about his state of stress
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  Speaker 1: in this moment, was because it wasn't like this was
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  Speaker 1: his first bender.
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  Speaker 5: Not at all. No, not at all. And we will
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  Speaker 5: get to that.
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  Speaker 4: But let's hear a little clip that does a really
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  Speaker 4: good job of summing up how it might have felt
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  Speaker 4: to be standing in that particular situation, in that particular
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  Speaker 4: state of mind.
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  Speaker 7: There was one guy, one guy who had an amazing
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  Speaker 7: claim to fame in terms of drugs and sports. His
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  Speaker 7: name was Doc Ellis, and Doc Ellis did an incredible thing.
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  Speaker 7: The one person who knows, Thank you, doc Ellis pitched
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  Speaker 7: a no hitter on LSD.
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  Speaker 5: You've taken LSD.
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  Speaker 7: Tell the others how hard that might be. If I
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  Speaker 7: took LSD, I'd be talking to every blade of grass
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  Speaker 7: like sorry, sorry, sir, to walk into a Major League
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  Speaker 7: Baseball stadium like.
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  Speaker 5: The whole feel is okay. So your little creative license
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  Speaker 5: there from Robin Williams.
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  Speaker 4: But he did tip us off to the outcome of this,
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  Speaker 4: this this thing that doc Ellis did.
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  Speaker 5: He pitched a no hitter.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, and this is an incredibly rare feat. In one
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  Speaker 1: hundred and thirty six years of baseball history, only two
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  Speaker 1: hundred and seventy six no hitters have ever been recorded,
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  Speaker 1: and as far as we know, this is the only
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  Speaker 1: one that occurred under the influence of LSD. And it's
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  Speaker 1: strange because you would expect maybe he would call out
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  Speaker 1: of the game, maybe he would show up and have
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  Speaker 1: an abysmal performance, But he played on acid, not only
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  Speaker 1: well but spectacularly. He also did walk quite a few batters,
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  Speaker 1: but no one hit a ball that he threw. And additionally,
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  Speaker 1: no one knew that he was on LSD, or virtually
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  Speaker 1: no one. It wasn't until fourteen years later that Ellis
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  Speaker 1: confirmed to a reporter at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette that
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  Speaker 1: he had played the game on acid. And the reporter,
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  Speaker 1: Bob Smisik, brought this up because he was working off
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  Speaker 1: a tip somebody had told them there was a rumor. Also,
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  Speaker 1: Ellis didn't just say that he took acid. He said
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  Speaker 1: he took acid that he received from Tim Leary, the
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  Speaker 1: guru himself.
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  Speaker 5: He did say that thing. Ben.
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  Speaker 4: It's very true, and it's a problematic story for a
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  Speaker 4: few reasons that come from that ESPN article that we
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  Speaker 4: talked about earlier, but it's called the Long Strange Trip
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  Speaker 4: of Ellis. But it wasn't smysic that Doc told that
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  Speaker 4: particular part of the story too. It was later when
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  Speaker 4: he was inducted into something called the Baseball Reliquary Shrine
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  Speaker 4: of the Eternals that was in Pasadena, California, and he
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  Speaker 4: was talking to the executive director I named Terry Cannon,
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  Speaker 4: who he told that Leary, that former Harvard psych professor
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  Speaker 4: had given him the drug because he wanted to see
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  Speaker 4: he wanted to test how it would affect a professional athlete.
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  Speaker 1: That's a weird claim, though, isn't it.
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  Speaker 4: It's a very weird claim, a claim that has several
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  Speaker 4: serious problems that are outlined beautifully in this article. One
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  Speaker 4: of the big ones right off the bat was that
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  Speaker 4: during this time Leary was in fact incarcerated, and that
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  Speaker 4: comes from his biography Robert Greenfield.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: And then another thing is he said that he got
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  Speaker 1: the acid from a UCLA laboratory. And also people on
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  Speaker 1: leside don't agree.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Leary actually has a personal archivist, a guy named Michael Horowitz,
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  Speaker 4: that said this was just almost definitely bogus, based on
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  Speaker 4: I think probably most specifically the fact that he was
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  Speaker 4: in jail. But he did say that Leary knew about
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  Speaker 4: the new hitter and found out about it, and that
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  Speaker 4: he had purchased Leary some of Doc Ellis's baseball cards,
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  Speaker 4: and that Leary carried one around with him for the
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  Speaker 4: rest of his life to show off to fans of
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  Speaker 4: psychedelics and sports.
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  Speaker 1: Right, So if we look at the timeline here, that
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  Speaker 1: makes it sound much more likely that Leary, while a fan,
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  Speaker 1: learned of this experience afterwards rather than beforehand. You know
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  Speaker 1: what I mean.
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  Speaker 5: I do know what you mean.
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  Speaker 4: And it's interesting too, because Ellis had, as you said,
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  Speaker 4: been a reputation that was not only about partying, but
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  Speaker 4: was it just about being kind of his own kind
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  Speaker 4: of free spirit in jail, he kind of did things
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  Speaker 4: his own way, march to his own drummer, and you know,
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  Speaker 4: you get the gist.
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  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah. He described himself as arrogant, flamboyant, and controversial. There's
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  Speaker 1: an article from The Washington Post by Matt Shudel that
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  Speaker 1: explains some of Ellis's erratic behavior, or at least depicts it.
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  Speaker 1: He was known for throwing balls directly at batters, arguing
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  Speaker 1: with managers and players from other teams, and he even
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  Speaker 1: chased Heckler's in the stands. So you know, there are
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  Speaker 1: a lot of fans of sports who will heckel the
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  Speaker 1: opposing team's players. This was a guy who would come
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  Speaker 1: after you.
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  Speaker 5: Oh big time. It is crazy.
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  Speaker 4: And he came up in the minors like he was like,
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  Speaker 4: I think eighteen years old when he got recruited, maybe
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  Speaker 4: nineteen when he first started playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates,
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  Speaker 4: and this was during a time of horrible racial inequality
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  Speaker 4: in the United States.
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  Speaker 1: He refused in many ways to fit in that stereo
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  Speaker 1: tear typical cookie cutter image that mass media and the
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: culture of the time would try to force people into
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  Speaker 1: based on what they perceived as what this person should
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: be like or what they were doing. One of my
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: favorite examples he once showed up in the Pirate's bullpen
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: wearing hair curlers because he said that the resulting moisture
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: on his head would help him throw his signature into
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: illegal spitball, yeah.
• 14:26
  Speaker 5: Very illegalist.
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: Spitball is an illegal pitch where the pitcher actually changes
• 14:32
  Speaker 4: the way the ball contacts the hand by putting spit
• 14:37
  Speaker 4: or some kind of like foreign substance like petroleum jelly
• 14:40
  Speaker 4: or in this case, the sweat off of the back
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: of his neck.
• 14:43
  Speaker 5: But yeah, he.
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  Speaker 4: Actually got issued a letter from the commissioner of Major
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: League Baseball ordering him not to wear hair curlers. And
• 14:52
  Speaker 4: the thing with him was he just didn't like being
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: told what to do. And he might have come off
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: as erratic or just wilful, but he kind of knew
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: what he was doing. According to a lot of his
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: childhood friends, people that had known him his whole life,
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: that were interviewed in a really cool movie called No No,
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: a documentary Dock which is excellent and a really good
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  Speaker 4: deep dive into this very divisive and interesting man's life.
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  Speaker 4: So in the film, another picture named Steve Blass said
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: that in those days, which was the sixties, they were
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: playing a lot of day games, so everyone was showing
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: up completely hungover, and one way that you dealt with
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  Speaker 4: that was by taking amphetamines.
• 15:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: See history today remembers doc Ellis primarily as the guy
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  Speaker 1: who pitched a no hitter while he was on LSD.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: But there are a couple of things that are misremembered there.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: One is the nature of LSD you'r acid and how
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: high he would have been actually, And then the second
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: thing is that was not the normal thing. It was
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: much more normal for players to be consuming amphetamines.
• 16:13
  Speaker 4: Yeah, several players from that era were interviewed for this film,
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  Speaker 4: and I think the number got as high as like
• 16:20
  Speaker 4: ninety six percent. These guys are obviously, you know, editorializing
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: here a little bit. There's no poll that was taken,
• 16:27
  Speaker 4: but they were in the game. You know, they were
• 16:28
  Speaker 4: around these guys, and they knew what was done. And
• 16:33
  Speaker 4: it wasn't like people weren't juicing in those days. They
• 16:35
  Speaker 4: weren't taking steroids necessarily. They were popping Benny's and Greenies.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: Or Dexa mil right, which was a drug a choice.
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: And this was kind of before the era of widespread
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: steroid uses.
• 16:48
  Speaker 6: Right.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: So one thing we absolutely want to do in the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: exploration of this story is established that, yeah, Doc Ellis
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: may have been the only person on the field on LSD,
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: but that doesn't mean he was the only person on
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: the field on.
• 17:08
  Speaker 5: Drugs in an altered state.
• 17:09
  Speaker 4: In an altered state, right, because I mean the thing
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: about you know, those kinds of amphetamine, this is the
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: kind of stuff that fighter pilots would take you know,
• 17:16
  Speaker 4: during World War Two, Hitler.
• 17:19
  Speaker 5: Was quite fond of them.
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: Not to equate baseball players from the sixties with Adolf Hitler,
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: but it was certainly a tool of war. And sports
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: are nothing if not organized war where nobody dies, you know.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: That's one of the more popular philosophical interpretations of athleticism
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: that goes back, you know, into ancient days brandy circuses, right, right,
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: weren't the chop heads.
• 17:42
  Speaker 4: Although people might die of like heatstroke or you know,
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: some sort of dramatic brain injury over time, but typically
• 17:50
  Speaker 4: you would not see people carried off of the field
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: of baseball in a stretcher.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: And there was also a pro cannabis culture at the time, Right,
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: it was not uncommon for athletes to also smoke weed.
• 18:01
  Speaker 5: It's true, And I'm wondering, man, I couldn't quite find this.
• 18:03
  Speaker 4: But when did it, Like if this was such common
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: knowledge or it just seems so obvious. I did see
• 18:09
  Speaker 4: a trainer saying I don't want this in my locker room.
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: Don't let me see you doing it. But certainly seemed
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: quite pervasive. When was it that, like widespread drug testing
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: became a thing in Major League baseball.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you have to wonder if it was a result
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: of widespread drug test policies. Maybe players only stopped doing
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: this stuff when it became a firable or finable offense, right,
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: other than someone writing a angry letter to you. There's
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: also a question about how much drug use really has dwindled.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: According to an article by Huffington Post written by Andy
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Martino in twenty seventeen, current and former baseball players have
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: said that as many as twenty five percent of Major
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: League Baseball players have you cocaine? So, is it a
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: situation where there are fewer altered states? Or is this
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: situation where the type of drug changes but drug use
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: still exist.
• 19:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm not quite sure.
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure either. But it's mystifying because as
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: a fairly square person myself, I would just imagine that
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: these all have radically different effects.
• 19:21
  Speaker 5: Right, I would think so. Ben.
• 19:23
  Speaker 4: Here's the thing too about doc ellis he you know,
• 19:25
  Speaker 4: we talk about the drug use, We talked about him
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: being a bit of a loose cannon, but he was
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: described by a lot of his friends in this documentary as.
• 19:34
  Speaker 5: Being controlled crazy. They called him controlled crazy.
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: He knew how to keep his wild behavior in check
• 19:42
  Speaker 4: and to do it just enough so that it could
• 19:44
  Speaker 4: make him money like Dennis Robins style.
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: Right, So there might be some marketing there, some focused
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: application of eccentricity or insanity.
• 19:52
  Speaker 5: That's right, because you have to think too.
• 19:53
  Speaker 4: In those days, especially during this No hitter, African American
• 19:57
  Speaker 4: pop culture had really infiltrated the mainstream, and Doc was
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: a flashy guy.
• 20:03
  Speaker 5: He had fashion sense.
• 20:04
  Speaker 4: He liked to wear big, loud colors and big, you know,
• 20:07
  Speaker 4: clunky clogs and bell bottoms, and he was like one
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: of the first guys to wear an earring. Very ahead
• 20:13
  Speaker 4: of his time culturally, at least in terms of baseball,
• 20:16
  Speaker 4: because he actually was quoted as saying when talking about
• 20:21
  Speaker 4: the nineteen seventy one All Star Game that baseball was
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: pretty backwards when it came to black players. And there
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: was a controversy because he really liked to stir stuff up,
• 20:33
  Speaker 4: and in the press he came out and said, you
• 20:36
  Speaker 4: were not going to put two brothers against each other
• 20:39
  Speaker 4: in this All Star Game, meaning they had already said
• 20:42
  Speaker 4: that they were going to start the American League team
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: with Vida Blue, who was a black pitcher, and Doc
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: thought that he was going to not get to start
• 20:52
  Speaker 4: for his league because a guy named Sparky Anderson, a
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: white guy, was probably going to get that privilege.
• 20:57
  Speaker 5: So he got the.
• 20:58
  Speaker 4: Media all stirred up and was kind of able to
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: bait them into getting him exactly what he wanted, and
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: he was He started in the All Star Game, right.
• 21:07
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: And it's strange because looking back in his later interviews
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: when he sobered up, Ellis said that he did not
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: remember a lot of these activities. Not only did he
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: not remember a lot of the details of his legendary
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: no hitter run, he also said he didn't remember much
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: of nineteen sixty nine and nineteen seventy in general.
• 21:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like, what is it Matt LeBlanc and Friends.
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: He said he couldn't remember like a whole season of
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: that show because he was on so many pills the
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: whole time.
• 21:41
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I can't imagine not remembering like a whole year.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, it could happen for a number of reasons.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: I've got I got a few fuzzy ones. I think
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: I'm going to take us down a really brief side
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: trail here that listeners from some of the other shows
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: are familiar with, regardless of what sort of substances you
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: may or may not take throughout your life. Your memory
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: is treacherous and works against you, oh for sure, because
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: every time you're remembering something, you're not remembering the event,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: you're remembering the last time you remembered it. So you're
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: playing a game of telephone with yourself. That's why you
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: will see even an accounts we've presented in this show.
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: That's why I'll see people who years later claim that
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: a myth about them is true, even when it is
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: demonstrably not the case. And I had a question with Ellis.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know how you feel, Noel, but I believe
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: the LSD story. I think it's true.
• 22:33
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: In fact, you can hear Doc himself describe all of
• 22:37
  Speaker 4: this in a really cool animated short by an outfit
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: called No Moss that's illustrated by a guy named James
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: Blagden and has audio from an interview that Ellis did
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: in two thousand and eight on NPR with Donnelle Alexander
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: and Niley elll And it's a really really cool video.
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: And when we play a little clip of that audio
• 22:58
  Speaker 4: right now, I didn't see the hitters.
• 23:02
  Speaker 8: All I could tell was if there was on the
• 23:04
  Speaker 8: right side or.
• 23:05
  Speaker 5: The left side.
• 23:06
  Speaker 8: The catcher put tape on his favors so I could
• 23:10
  Speaker 8: see the signals. We had a rookie on a team
• 23:13
  Speaker 8: at that particular time named Dave Cash, and he kept
• 23:16
  Speaker 8: saying after the first inning, he said, you gotta know
• 23:19
  Speaker 8: no going no hit it.
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: I said, yeah, right, yeah, I don't know, Ben, But
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: hearing him tell that story, it sure sounds like somebody
• 23:28
  Speaker 4: telling a story they actually believe happened.
• 23:31
  Speaker 5: But it's hard to say.
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: We also know that he was probably not telling the
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: truth about the whole Timothy Leary thing. So you know,
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: I guess the jury is out, but I would like
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: to believe that it happened.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: So I don't know about you, fellow ridiculous historians, but
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I largely believe the bones of this story, the structure
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: of it. However, I have some pretty pertinent questions, one
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: being the degree of alteration that applied. If you look
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: at the timeline of the LSD was taking the way
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: LSD works, was he taking a larger hit, you know,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: was he off his cantalopes or was he experiencing the
• 24:11
  Speaker 1: equivalent of what Silicon Valley and Burning Man fans would
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: call a microdose yeah.
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: I mean, you know, from hearing him tell it, this
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: was his second tab that he had taken, and in
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: those days that stuff probably would have been pretty potent,
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: So I would lean more towards the what the kids
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: called trip and balls.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: So this LSD probably would have come from a source
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: similar to Owlsley, the legendary LSD supplier. And the reason
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: I'm wondering about the microdosing is because preliminary studies, which
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: have only occurred quite recently, seemed to indicate that there
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: may be some sort of relationship between what we call
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the flow state and the use of small amounts of hallucinogens,
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: not just LSD but psilocybin. So without getting two into it,
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: I have some I have some pretty fascinating studies, but
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: I'd like to hear from you folks. Do you think
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: that there was a relationship between the LSD that doc
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: Ellis consumed. Did it put him in a flow state
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: similar to the experience people would have when they practice
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the use of transcranial direct current simulation or meditation or
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: what have you, or do you think it was a coincidence?
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: Do you think he succeeded in spite of this?
• 25:34
  Speaker 4: You know, I did hear or I read that that
• 25:37
  Speaker 4: year the Padres were not particularly good.
• 25:40
  Speaker 5: They had lost like nineteen thumping games in that season,
• 25:43
  Speaker 5: so you know, could have just been a bad performance
• 25:46
  Speaker 5: on their part.
• 25:47
  Speaker 4: That either way, it's it's it's pretty impressive that a
• 25:50
  Speaker 4: guy could perform that well under the influence of such
• 25:54
  Speaker 4: a mind altering substance.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Ellis's Ellis's importance and his influence were not
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: just confined to the field of play. He was influential
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: and important on the US cultural stage, and other people
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: acknowledged this right very much.
• 26:11
  Speaker 4: So, I mean, we talked about how he was able
• 26:13
  Speaker 4: to influence that decision of starting two black pitchers against
• 26:18
  Speaker 4: one another in the nineteen seventy one All Star Game.
• 26:21
  Speaker 4: Also that year, he went on to win the World
• 26:25
  Speaker 4: Series with the Pirates, and one of his mentors was
• 26:30
  Speaker 4: a Puerto Rican player, also black, by the name of
• 26:34
  Speaker 4: Roberto Clemente, who was himself an outspoken opponent of racism
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: in baseball, and he and Ellis ended up being on
• 26:45
  Speaker 4: a version of the Pirates that had nine black players,
• 26:49
  Speaker 4: and it really kind of was right on this turning
• 26:52
  Speaker 4: point of culture where black culture became much more mainstream
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: like we talked about earlier, and players on the team
• 26:59
  Speaker 4: talk about this being a historic thing and just being
• 27:02
  Speaker 4: about the fact that everyone was fantastic baseball players. So
• 27:06
  Speaker 4: he really helped turn that conversation around to the point
• 27:09
  Speaker 4: where he actually got a very important letter from Jackie Robinson.
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: And actually here's a clip of Doc reading a bit
• 27:18
  Speaker 4: of this letter from that documentary called No No.
• 27:21
  Speaker 6: I read your coments in our paper the last few
• 27:24
  Speaker 6: days and wanted you to know how much I appreciate
• 27:27
  Speaker 6: your courage and honesty. In my opinion, progress for today's
• 27:31
  Speaker 6: players will only come from this kind of dedication.
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: I'm sure.
• 27:35
  Speaker 6: Also you know some of the possible consequences. The news media,
• 27:40
  Speaker 6: while knowing full well you're right and honest, will use
• 27:45
  Speaker 6: every means to get back at you. That will be
• 27:48
  Speaker 6: times when you will ask yourself, is it worth it all?
• 27:52
  Speaker 6: I can only say, Doc, it is, And even though
• 27:55
  Speaker 6: you will want to yield, in the long run, your
• 27:58
  Speaker 6: own feeling of yourself will be most important. So I'd
• 28:03
  Speaker 6: have to be left alone.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: So he goes on to say, try to get more
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: players to understand your views and you will find great support.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: You have made a real contribution. I surely hope your
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: great ability continues. That ability will determine the success of
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: your dedication and honesty. I again appreciate what you were doing.
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: Continued success, Jackie Robinson, and you can read the full
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: letter on various sites online. Just search for Jackie Robinson
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: and Doc Ellis. This leads us to perhaps one of
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: the most important points of the story, which is the following.
• 28:41
  Speaker 5: It is very easy, it.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: Is tempting, and it is guess fun to think of
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: doc Ellis solely as a guy who said, I started
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Nixon was the home played umpire. I thought I was
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: pitching a baseball to Jimmy Hendricks and so on. But
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: that is a mischaracterization. We are defining an entire person
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: by one afternoon in their life. And as Brittany de
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: la Cretaz argues in a Rolling Stone article, how Doc Ellis,
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: player who pitched a no hitter on LSD, is misremembered,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: it is better, and more importantly, it is more accurate
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: to remember him as an outspoken advocate not just for
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: racial equality but also for sobriety. Doc Ellis retired from
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: baseball in nineteen eighty and he didn't have some egregious
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: injury that rendered him physically incapable playing the game. According
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: to him, he lost interest in the game and in
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: that same year he entered rehab. He stayed for forty
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: days at a location in Wickenberg, Arizona, known as the Meadows.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't until nineteen eighty four that he revealed
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: he had pitched this no hitter under the influence of
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: LSD and once achieving sobriety, he spent the rest of
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: his life helping other people escape drug addiction, which is commendable,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: you know. And he spent twenty eight years doing this.
• 30:17
  Speaker 5: Yeah, he was no joke about it either.
• 30:19
  Speaker 4: I mean he brought that same bravado and intensity that
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: he brought to the game and that he used to
• 30:28
  Speaker 4: not take any crap from anybody in terms of the
• 30:30
  Speaker 4: way he dealt with racism. He brought that same energy
• 30:34
  Speaker 4: to helping people escape their demons and their addictions and
• 30:38
  Speaker 4: not taking no for an answer and not putting up
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: with anyone making excuses for themselves.
• 30:45
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: And he had worked as a counselor in Beverly Hills.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: He had worked in jails and institutions and juvenile detention centers,
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: And you know, you kind of have to wonder, and
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know what whether there's an answer to this,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: but you kind of have to wonder why, out of
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: the almost three decades of work he did helping people
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: achieve sobriety, he is still known for one, granted, one
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: amazing game, but one LSD influenced game in nineteen seventy.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the answer is.
• 31:21
  Speaker 5: I mean, from his own mouth.
• 31:23
  Speaker 4: Apparently one of his favorite phrases around the house was
• 31:27
  Speaker 4: f baseball. He apparently, according to this fantastic ESPN article,
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: felt very used up and abused by it, having started
• 31:37
  Speaker 4: at it at such a young age, and despite achieving
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: such a great success, it being a very big part
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: of his young adult life that possibly led to some
• 31:50
  Speaker 4: of these substance abuse problems to help deal with pain
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: that he had in his arm from throwing the ball
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: so hard all the time, from traveling around, being constantly
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: on the road, feeling a little uprooted and isolated. And
• 32:03
  Speaker 4: these are his own words from the documentary, So you know,
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: I could see how that would be a complicated relationship.
• 32:09
  Speaker 4: It's something that gave him much success and accolades, but
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: he never played a game sober.
• 32:17
  Speaker 5: He did try to one time.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy three, gave it.
• 32:20
  Speaker 4: A shot and started warming up in the bullpen, only
• 32:23
  Speaker 4: to realize that he had quote forgotten how to throw.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: It's interesting because it ties into something that people call
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: state dependent learning.
• 32:31
  Speaker 5: Have you heard of this?
• 32:32
  Speaker 7: I have.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: It's the idea that the substances influencing your body when
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: you are learning or engaging in a certain skill then
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: have an effect on your performance and that skill. So,
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: for instance, a more wholesome version of this would be
• 32:51
  Speaker 1: the idea that when you drink coffee and you're studying something,
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: then you are going to be more likely to successfully
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: recall it when you are drinking coffee again, right, that's
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: a very at base explanation, but it can extend to
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: other substances as well. Oh, I should also mention he
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: was he was an advocate for the treatment of sickle
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: cell that's right.
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: He was able to get funding in somewhere in the
• 33:18
  Speaker 4: neighborhood of one hundred and forty million dollars for that
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: disease that was largely misunderstood and a huge problem for
• 33:26
  Speaker 4: the African American community.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty ninety sort of returned to baseball when
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: he served as a player and coach for the Saint
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: Petersburg Pelicans of the Senior Professional Baseball Association, but that was,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: I think more for the love of the game.
• 33:41
  Speaker 4: He also had a little stint in acting, I think,
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: where he was in a movie with Michael Keaton.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Gung Ho, which was nineteen eighty six, directed by
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: Ron Howard. In two thousand and seven, Doc Ellis was
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: diagnosed with cirrhosis and was placed on the list for
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: a liver transplant.
• 33:58
  Speaker 4: And he did pass away two thousand and eight because
• 34:00
  Speaker 4: unfortunately he had already sustained some damage to his heart
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: and it was too risky to do a liver transplant.
• 34:08
  Speaker 4: And Yeah, you can't help it think that that liver
• 34:12
  Speaker 4: problems like that were the result of a lifetime of
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: that substance abuse. Despite having dealt with that and been
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: a huge beacon of hope for others that we're dealing
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: with those problems, that stuff does catch up to you.
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: It's it's absolutely true, and it's a shame that he
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: was not around to see No No, a documentary which
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: came out in twenty fourteen. A few years after his passing,
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: he was interred at the Inglewood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: And although Doc Ellis may have physically left us today,
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: his legacy continues on. And it's not just a story
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: about again an amazing afternoon in baseball. It's a story
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: about a man who struggled first to save himself, then
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: to improve society, and then ultimately to save others that
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: he met in similar situations. That's beautiful, it really is,
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: and we hope that you think so too. This is
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: a fun one to look into.
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: Cannot recommend enough that ESPN article from Outside the Lines
• 35:20
  Speaker 4: called the Long Strange Trip of Doc Ellis, Meet the
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: Man behind Baseball's most Psychedelic Myth. You can find that
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: online in full by Patrick Ruby. It's also got some
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: fantastic photos and illustrations by Joe Chiardello. Also cannot recommend
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: enough the documentary No No, a documentary.
• 35:41
  Speaker 5: You can stream that on Amazon Prime. I think it's
• 35:44
  Speaker 5: like a couple bucks.
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: And well worth it. It's money well spent in the meantime.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Although the podcast is over for today, if you have
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: a hankering to encounter more history of the Ridiculous variety.
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: You can find us on Instagram, you can find us
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: on faceboo book, you can find us on Twitter. We'd
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: especially like to recommend our community page, Ridiculous Historians, where
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: you can interact with your fellow listeners, all of whom,
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: as far as I have found, are witty, funny, and insightful.
• 36:14
  Speaker 4: It's true memes a plenty, a lot of fun to
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: be had there, so check it out and also do
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: us a solid and leave us a nice review on
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: iTunes because it makes us feel good and our tummies.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: And stay tuned when we return very soon in our
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: next episode to crack the case for a question we
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: might not have known you had. When did Fido become
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: a stand in name for dogs?
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: Here boy, here boy, while you're.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Waiting for a dog that heard that through your headphones
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: to run towards you. We would like to thank superproducer
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegrom. We would like to thank our research assistant
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: Christopher Hasiotis.
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: We'd like to thank Alex Williams, friend of the show,
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: who composed our theme, and most importantly, we'd like to
• 36:56
  Speaker 4: thank you for hanging out with.
• 36:58
  Speaker 5: Us and being a lot of fun. We'll see you
• 37:00
  Speaker 5: next time
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
• 37:09
  Speaker 4: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.