Dock Ellis

In 1970, Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the San Diego Padres. In 1984, he claimed that he was high on LSD during the game and hardly recalls it:

I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the (catcher's) glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me.

Barbara Manning and the SF Seals (awesome name, no?) wrote a song about the game, which, along with a cool drawing and some more information about Dock Ellis, can be found here.

(via a convoluted path too complicated to attribute, but here are the Wikipedia pages for Dock Ellis and Barbara Manning. Trippy picture via The Psychedelic Shakespeare Solution.)

what counts

Hendrik Hertzberg knows how to be a baseball fan:

El Duque, who is my favorite Yankee currently playing (though no longer for the Yankees), has been a Met since 2006. He’s currently on the disabled list with a persistent bunion and hasn’t actually been in an official game yet this season, if you want to get technical about it. But when he suits up he still looks great. It’s all about the socks.

And previously:

To answer my friend’s question, even though I’m not a Yankee fan: my favorite Yankee playing today is El Duque, not only because he’s great but mainly because he wears his uniform the right way, with his socks showing. Not with his trouser bottoms down around his ankles like a schmuck.

Manny Ramirez is the most obvious example of this schmucktastic fashion choice, but, hey, that's just Manny being Manny; he can almost pull it off because it looks like he can't be any other way. Other players, though, would greatly benefit from the socks-up fashion, especially, it would seem, players whose body type isn't flattered by the unforgiving uniforms. Pulling up the socks doesn't hurt players who look like they were poured into their uniform either. Just look at Barry Zito: he might be having a laughably awful year, but at least he looks great doing it.

might that be a balk?

As amazing as this pitch is, it's hard not to feel that it's slightly unfair. Also, that couldn't have been a strike.