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Spinks says that two weeks later, Ellis told him about the LSD, and that he had been unable to see which players he was facing, making out only whether they had been left- or right-handed. They just thought it was Dock being ‘Crazy Dock.’ ” “None of his teammates really knew what acid was. “He said that knew he was high, but not what he was high on,” says Radice. Of course, Ellis didn’t go public about what condition he was in at the time, so no one who saw the game knew what they had just witnessed. He responded, “Did I see it? You should have seen it the way I saw it.” After the game, says Spinks, someone asked Ellis if he saw the game’s final play. He pitched wildly through all nine innings, walking eight and hitting a batter, but managed to pitch a no-hitter in a 2-0 victory. “When he woke, he thought it was a day off, but he had already gone through 24 hours.”Įllis rushed to San Diego for the game. “He was on such a bender that he lost track of time - he was partying for 24, 36 hours straight,” says Radice. He partied, fell asleep and took more LSD when he woke up. He took LSD, then went to a friend’s house in LA. That was one of his little rituals.”īut as wild as Ellis was, few could have predicted what he’d pull off on June 12, 1970, in a game against the San Diego Padres.Īccording to Ellis, he flew into San Diego on June 11, one day before his next pitching assignment. He had a black light, and he would, and he would listen to Jimi Hendrix. “By 1970, he had clearly experimented with LSD,” says Radice. “It got to the point that when he went to a game and wasn’t pitching, he had to take greenies just to be able to concentrate and sit on the bench,” says Radice.Īnd there seemed to be no limit to Ellis’s drug use. Jeff Radice, the film’s director, says that Ellis’ use of pills became a full-on addiction. He did things higher and harder than anyone else.” Dock was a little bit more intense than I was. “If he took 10 milligrams, I would take 20. We would try to see who could out-amphetamine one another,” says Spinks, noting that the normal dose was 5 milligrams. “We did everything, tried everything and partied all the time. According to him, speed pills were consumed by around 90 percent of major-league players at the time.