The Dock Ellis LSD No-Hitter

On June 12, 1970, Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis threw one of the strangest masterpieces in baseball history: a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres.
The box score read like a crime scene — eight walks, one hit batter, and zero hits. It looked less like a pitching gem and more like controlled chaos.

And years later, Ellis dropped a bombshell: he said he’d thrown it while high on LSD.

It sounds impossible. But he told the story so vividly that it’s become one of the most debated tales in sports. Could a big-league pitcher really pull that off? Or was Dock just embellishing an already wild night?

We fired up the AI Baseball Truth-O-Meter to find out.

The most detailed version comes from a mid-2000s public-radio interview on Weekend America.

Ellis said the Pirates had flown to San Diego and were given a day off before the series. He asked the manager if he could fly home to Los Angeles. “Sure,” the manager said.

Once home, Dock decided to “relax.” He took LSD, hung out with friends, and eventually went to sleep — only to be shaken awake the next morning by his friend’s girlfriend holding the newspaper.

“You better get up — you’re pitching today.”

Confused, Ellis insisted, “No, I pitch tomorrow.”
She pointed at the date. He’d lost a day.

Panicking, he says he took more acid “in the middle of the morning,” rushed to the airport, and flew to San Diego just in time. Once at the park, he added a different stimulant — “bennies,” baseball’s old-school upper of choice — and jogged out to the mound.

During the game, he said, the world bent and blurred.

“I didn’t see the hitters. All I could tell was if they were on the right side or the left side. The catcher put tape on his fingers so I could see the signals.”

At one point, after covering first base, Ellis supposedly blurted, “I just made a touchdown!”

The Pittsburgh Press, the Post-Gazette, and others chronicled a bizarre but genuine no-hitter: Ellis walked eight, hit a batter, and somehow held the Padres hitless in a 2-0 win.

The tone was bemused admiration. Nobody mentioned drugs. But one article did note that Ellis arrived late to the ballpark — small line, perhaps a big clue?

That detail matches his later account: racing in from L.A. and barely making it before first pitch.

Padres' hitters later said they’d never seen anything like it — balls sailing, diving, darting, sometimes nowhere near the strike zone. Yet nothing dropped safely for a hit.

Not everyone bought the LSD part. One Pittsburgh beat writer later said Ellis didn’t look impaired that day and that the press would’ve noticed if he’d stumbled in dazed or glassy-eyed. Fair point.

Others close to the team heard the story second-hand in later years but couldn’t confirm it firsthand. There were no clubhouse whispers at the time, no teammates running to Sports Illustrated shouting “Dock’s on acid!”

So we’re left with a classic baseball riddle: a story no one can prove — or disprove.

Let’s bring in the data.

Using Baseball-Reference stats and SABR’s play-by-play reconstruction, the AI Baseball Truth-O-Meter compared Dock Ellis’s 1970 season norms to that night’s psychedelic circus act.

On a typical night in 1970, Ellis walked about 3.8 batters per nine innings.
Against the Padres, he walked eight.

He usually hit one batter every 30 innings — but on this night, he hit one in nine.

His strikeouts ticked slightly above average, from 5.4 to 6 per nine, but only because he was constantly pitching from behind in the count.

He threw an estimated 161 pitches, roughly 50 more than usual, and posted a Game Score of 86, far above his season average of 62.

Ellis faced 36 batters — nine over the minimum — and every baserunner reached via walk or hit-by-pitch.

No errors. No borderline calls. Just pure, sweaty chaos and an improbable zero in the hit column. SABR later called it “one of the wildest no-hitters in modern baseball.”

Even without LSD, it looks like a man fighting both the strike zone and his own mind.

So let's add up the evidence:

• Ellis’s later retelling is packed with sensory detail — the girlfriend’s newspaper, the “gold pouch” of bennies, the warped baseballs, the misty stadium.
   
• A contemporary newspaper confirms he arrived late.
   
• The box score supports his claim of being all over the place: eight walks, one HBP, constant traffic.
   

• He didn’t mention LSD until decades later.
   
• No teammate or coach has ever said they knew that night.
   
• The only journalist who’s gone on record recalls no obvious impairment.
   

It’s the definition of a split decision — half myth, half box score.

Dock Ellis was famous for mixing truth with theater.
He once claimed he tried to bean every batter in the Cincinnati Reds lineup to “wake up” his teammates — and, indeed, we can verify he did hit the first three batters that night.
He wore hair curlers in the bullpen to challenge baseball’s unwritten grooming rules and loved using provocation as performance art.

Those habits make the LSD story feel both more plausible and more suspect.
It fits perfectly with his pattern: a protest, a spectacle, and a story that grows in the telling.

The verified record — his lateness, his wildness, his lone cover at first base — supports much of what Dock described.
But Ellis was a man who saw his own life as a story worth editing. The LSD no-hitter may not have happened exactly as he said, yet it’s too perfectly Dock to dismiss outright.

There was truth in the haze, and haze in the truth.

Our AI Truth-O-Meter reads:
🟡 MOSTLY TRUE — embellished, but believable.