I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the (catcher's) glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. 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. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me.
Dock Ellis' account of pitching a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres while high on LSD
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If you get the chance you ought to look up the July 4 Sports Illustrated. It's this year's "where are they now" issue, and there's a great article on the 1971 Bucs. (This is the 40th anniversary.) The first thing is: this team was really loose. Ellis was for sure the craziest. But there were others. Giusti and the grave-digging Hebner are worth mentioning. The other thing about this team was that the Pirates' organization was the most integrated anywhere in baseball. Five of the eight players in the starting lineup that year were black. (Only Hebner, Alley and Robertson were white.) And then on September 1, the Pirates, with no fanfare whatever, fielded an all black lineup for the first time in baseball history. Ellis of course was pitching. According to Al Oliver, he didn't notice until the fourth inning, and he says to Dave Cash, "You know what, we got all brothers out here."
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