Dock Ellis Dies, Throws At St. Peter
December 22, 2008 6:42 PM
Former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis died last week at the age of 63.
The outspoken pitcher was perhaps best known for tossing an eight-walk no-hitter against the San Diego Padres in 1970 while under the influence of LSD.
A 1999 charter inductee to the Baseball Reliquary, Ellis refused to take shit from anybody:
Perhaps Ellis’ most startling act occurred on May 1, 1974, when he tied a major league record by hitting three batters in a row.
In spring training that year, Ellis sensed the Pirates had lost the aggressiveness that drove them to three straight division titles from 1970 to 1972. Furthermore, the team now seemed intimidated by Cincinnati’s “Big Red Machine.”
“Cincinnati will bullshit with us and kick our ass and laugh at us,” Ellis said. “They’re the only team that talk about us like a dog.”
Ellis single-handedly decided to break the Pirates out of their emotional slump, announcing that “We gonna get down. We gonna do the do. I’m going to hit these motherfuckers.”
True to his word, in the first inning of the first regular-season game he pitched against the Reds, Ellis hit leadoff batter Pete Rose in the ribs, then plunked Joe Morgan in the kidney, and loaded the bases by hitting Dan Driessen in the back. Tony Perez, batting cleanup, dodged a succession of Ellis’ pitches to walk and force in a run. The next hitter was Johnny Bench.
“I tried to deck him twice,” Ellis recalled. “I threw at his jaw, and he moved. I threw at the back of his head, and he moved.”
At this point, Pittsburgh manager Danny Murtaugh removed Ellis from the game. But his strategy worked: the Pirates snapped out of their lethargy to win a division title in 1974, while the Reds failed to win their division for the first time in three years.
Dock Ellis had a 12-year career record of 138-119 and was a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates 1971 World Series championship team. Toward the end of his baseball career, Ellis counseled jailed drug addicts and continued doing so after his retirement from the game.
