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/

For radio transmission 1

(some of these articles are a little haphazard because they were written for radio initially)
--------------------------------------
Mid eighties (82 to 85)
--------------------------------------

Post Blue Monday and prior to the Buck Rogers Era...

That era is a good one because it has a glorious high point and a very low point in Expos history. The positive being the first All Star Game held outside the US of A and the low point being the Pittsburgh Cocaine trials of 85 and one of our greatest Heroes being entangled in that situation.



------------------------------
All Star Game
------------------------------

lots of Expos there eh!

59,057 people attended the All Star Game in Montreal Quebec.  Four starters and one reserve were in Expo uniform, Mr. Steve Rogers, Mr. Andre The Hawk Dawson,  Mr. Gary The Kid Carter, Mr. Timmy The Rock Raines, and Mr. Al Scoop Oliver. This may be the actual high point of Major League baseball in Montreal. We were one of  the top 5 baseball cities in North America at this point in time. NL won 4-1.



------------------------------------------
Pittsburgh Cocaine Trials
------------------------------------------
The All Star Game was a blip in the radar on the positive side, the next real big blip in the Expos history radar is the 1985 Drug trials which involved one of if not the most beloved Expo...the great Tim Raines.

This has some similarities to the Steroid trials of recent years but some glaring contrasts also. The obvious being the steroids is performance enhancing while cocaine is a performance hindering substance. In the steroids hearings, there was three main ways the players responded to the accusation...which was (A) to lie and deny (B) To say they simply can't remember or (C) to admit it straight up and apologize. That was the way the accused in the Pittsburgh drug trials reacted too, and the only guy who went the admit and apologize route was Timmy Raines. He held a heart felt press conference where he admitted he had a problem and needed help and then apologized to his team, wife, his parents, and his young son. He evaded any reproach from the league, and he wasn't suspended like many players were. He made the right decision by going that route and the Expos fans were forgiving to him.

click to make it bigger

He went from a really small town to party capital of the god damned world...Montreal atmosphere ate him up a little bit. He was only 20 years old when he became a full time player...(his salary from 81 to 82 rose from 45K to 200K) that's really young to be given a large sum of money and then turned loose on Saint Catherine street. You look at the forgive and forget policy nowadays like Ron Washington got off scot free and he was the manager of team back then this was more serious business...like Ronald Reagan's War on Drugs was in full effect and this could have a resulted in lengthy prison sentances, if they didn't have the money for good lawyers they would have been in the metal klink no doubt.

Raines Quote:

"Drug addiction is a disease people have just like diabetes. "






-------------------------
Raines/Dawson
-----------------------
Dawson was a good Christian type guy and became a surrogate older brother to Raines is what the general consensus is on any data you come across on the subject. Raines was younger and knew about Dawson from their time in Florida and looked up to him even before they even met apparently. Dawson was a positive role model and it was a big factor in getting Raines off of drugs and back in mental shape.