For radio transmission 4

Dock Ellis

Switching to general baseball history...it's a different game now the old days are gone...let's talk about some of the legends of these times. Characters of old who you won't come across too often anymore and let's talk about the best of the best himself...the man who was as bad as CAN BE...Mr. Dock Ellis.

He did some out there stuff man. In his book Dock Ellis in The Country of Baseball he let's you see his motives behind some of the more controversial things he did and it is really an interesting book. Most people are aware of the No Hitter on LSD...

He had an off day and took the liberty of getting himself a little influenced so to speak, and under said influence two days kind of merged into one day and he forgot he had to get to San Diego and pitch. He figured he'd counter the effects of the LSD by taking some stimulants. He says he had no depth perception and sizes were getting out of whack like the ball would be the size of a golf ball in his hand sometimes and other times it would be the size of a beach ball...

lookin' good Ross...

Honestly my opinion on this is that DECEPTION for a pitcher is 1000% times more effective than throwing hard and throwing strikes. Dock was hitting guys he was throwing balls in the dirt a few feet in front of the mound, he was throwing balls over the catchers head...he was so erratic that the hitters had no idea what to expect next. Take for example the only Expos pitcher to ever win 20 games Ross Grimsley...he never threw a ball harder than 80 miles an hour...but he had three different speeds and movement on his pitches and it was deceiving.

Take the game of May 1st of 1974, it's Dock's Pirates versus the Big Red Machine (HUGE RIVALRY) (Rose, Morgan, Bench, etc.) his catcher Manny Sanguillen asked him to go over the hitters strength and weaknesses before the game and Dock's says "No, I'm gonna do the DO tonight...I'm gonna MOW THEM DOWN every last one of them..."

...and he did...the first five batters and only five batters he faced were hit by a pitch or walked by expertly dodging his attempts to hit them. Pete Rose got it in the side, hit Joe Morgan right in the kidney, hit Dan Driessen in the back, Tony Perez was the one who dodged all the missiles.

My favorite is his interest in the Voodoo, and when he was playing in Dominican winter ball...Dock asked former Expo Manny Mota to drive him on an off night across the border into Haiti because he wanted to see some Zombies. Now this is probably another drug induced hallucination but he claims in the book to have seen actual zombies...

..."I had to go to Haiti. Zombies. It WAS zombies. We were in a jeep, we got to a certain area. I saw these people walking, four of them, zombies and a woman too, a zombie woman too...and these zombies were walking FUNNY."

you don't find guys like this in sports anymore.

http://peanutellis.ytmnd.com/