Who owns the footage of this game? Is it available to watch?
There’s a petition on Facebook to have the footage released aimed at MLB Network.
Moved to the Game Room.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Refresh our memories but was that a game where he later claimed that he was tripping on LSD at the time?
Yup.
Does footage actually exist? If it does,then release it. But it was rare to save footage back then.
Have you seen this?
Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No
The radio broadcast apparently exists, since they played some of it on the NPR show about it (from which the audio of this great short film comes: No Mas Presents: Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by James Blagden - YouTube).
Although one thing to keep in mind is that he didn’t tell the story about the LSD until about a decade later after he’d retired. Apparently at the time nobody thought he was acting especially weird for a pitcher in the midst of a no-hitter. It’s also quite possible that he was somewhat misremembering how much he was really under the influence during the game. So I’m guessing the footage, if it exists, isn’t going to be nearly as interesting as people are hoping it will be.
That video is better than any live footage could possibly be.
I think I love Doc Ellis now.
If anyone wants to read more, here’s a long, outstanding ESPN Outside the Line piece about Ellis.
I can’t help but think that this is an example of Frank Merriwell-type wishful thinking–like Grover Cleveland Alexander supposedly being drunk or hung over when he went out to face Tony Lazzeri in the 7th game of the 1926 World Series. (Whatever his drinking may have been, he was, like Lazzeri, an epileptic.) Hornsby had more sense than to send an indisposed pitcher against the likes of Ruth, Gehrig, Meusel, Lazzeri, etc.
My favorite Dock Ellis story DID happen, though. In 1974, for whatever reason, Dock decided he was going to hit every player in the Reds lineup. He hit the first three batters, and attempted to hit the clean-up hitter, but Tony Perez avoided being hit and drew a walk. When he threw 2 balls in a row at Johnny Bench’s head, the manager pulled him.
Now, I’m not wild about the idea of a pitcher going headhunting, but there’s something so out there, so outrageous about this that it just tickles me. What makes a man say, “Today I’m hitting every batter in the lineup?” Moreover, I wonder what would’ve happened if they’d let him, and they ‘batted around’, so to speak, in the first inning. Would he have found that satisfying enough,and started to pitch properly, or would he have kept going?
The idea of a pitcher throwing a ball at the head of a man standing sixty feet away (who is holding a bat) is to me foolhardy at best. Ellis could do few things worse than run the risk of an angry batter charging him, ready to brain him with his bat!