Game 63: Twins at Pirates

Aargh, ye mateys.

First pitch: 5:40 Central

Weather: Pitts-perfect, start temp 71°

Opponent’s SB site (where link dumps are “Bucs Arghticles”): Bucs Dugout

TV: Steve Wozniak+. Radio: Eventually dies in M*A*S*H

Are ya hungry for baseball yet? How about this?

Today’s Pirates starter, Mitch Keller, was born in Cedar Rapids, and looks like his DNA is at least 23% corn. He throws a mid-90s fastball and very effective sinker, plus an assortment of things that break from cutter to sweeper and points in between. Keller’s having a good season. Alas, Joe Ryan is broken and terrible forever, now. 2024 digits:

Dock drove Caddies and Corvettes and dressed like Superfly. He wore curlers in his hair – in Wrigley Field. He deliberately stirred up the staid, careful world of white sports reporting, like one of his idols, Muhammed Ali.

And, Dock Ellis claimed, “I pitched every game in the major leagues under the influence of drugs.”

All this and more is covered in the very fine film No-No: A Dockumentary. It’s available on several streaming sites for free; I watched it on this one.

Dock Ellis had enormous talent and an enormous sense of piercing wit. He took no crap from anybody, and lived his life the way he wanted – to a point.

In June of 1970, Ellis’s Pirates flew to San Diego for a weekend series. They had an off day first, and Ellis got permission from manager Danny Murtaugh to spend it in his hometown of Los Angeles.

Eliis went on a raging LSD bender, and lost track of what day it was. So by the time he learned it was Friday, and he was scheduled to start on the mound, there was no way to get the drug out of his system.

He started the game high, finished it high, walked eight batters and hit six more.

And it was a no-hitter. Here’s an amazing 2010 animated short by the filmmaker James Blagden:

Even before that, Ellis’s standard intake of various stimulants/depressants was off the charts. Like many baseball players of the era, he regularly consumed “greenies,” a pill form of legal amphetamines. (They were used by pilots in WWII to ward off fatigue, and by the 1960s were prescribed for everything from weight loss to “curing” depression.) Although, the usually-prescribed dose was two capsules a day; Dock averaged about 15.

Despite this, Ellis’s mentor on the Pirates was the straightlaced and generous Roberto Clemente. Together, they were part of the September 1, 1971 team that started the first all-Black lineup since the Negro Leagues (it wasn’t noticed, at first, because the Pirates were just that diverse). And those 1971 Pirates won the World Series.

After Clemente’s tragic death in 1972, Ellis’s drug addiction became destructive. It led to neglect and eventual abuse of his first wife; neglect and even more terrifying abuse of his second. It shortened his career. And contributed to his death from liver failure at the age of 63.

But after his second wife fled, Ellis checked himself into rehab. And it worked. His final marriage lasted the rest of his life. He went to college to become a licensed drug counselor, frequently working with juvenile detention inmates. Ultimately, he spent more years on that work than he did playing baseball.

Check out No-No sometime. It’s very funny, and very touching.

The Baseball Project gave us a song that’s funny and touching, too – if by “touching” you mean “hitting batters with baseballs.”

On May 1, 1974, the Pirates were dead last in the division. They were facing the Pete Rose-led Cincinnati Reds, who had owned the Pirates in recent meetings. So Dock decided to stir his team up a little.

He threw his last warm-up pitch at Rose… at Rose standing outside the batter’s box. Then the game started, and he threw at Rose again. And again. Until he hit him.

Then Ellis hit the next guy. And the next. Threw at the fourth hitter, who dodged his way to a RBI walk. Then Ellis threw at Johnny Bench. Who ducked – and Ellis was tossed from the game.

Not by the umps! By his manager.

The Pirates won that game. And they’d win their division, although they were quickly bounced in the playoffs. Still, it was a one-of-a-kind baseball moment from a one-of-a-kind player.

Dock Ellis was a wild man, a smart man, an eventually benevolent man, and there will never be another quite like him. When he picked a writer to work with on his autobiography, he picked a POET. Who picks a poet?

YouTube comments are frequently trash, except when turned into treasure, but I did like one YouTube commenter on the animated short saying their newspaper listed Dock in the boxscore as “Ellis, D.” Perfect.

Finally… remember when somebody (me) said last week that “we’re apparently stuck with gambling now, which is going to result in cheating scandals”?

Well, it’s already started. A former Pirates player has been banned for life.

There will be more of this. Count on it.