r.i.p. dock ellis

dead at 63.

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e252/tziller/Ellis.jpg

good story from a few years back.

Ellis, D. Hero.

RIP ;_;

dock ellis pitched no hitter on lsd - news story

sad moment in sports history. :(

RIP

http://www.jamesblagden.com/work/illustrations/dock.gif

This could almost go on the Michael Brown thread, but those threads make me nervous, so I'll keep it here. This is in Rick Perlstein's The Invisible Bridge:

In the sporting news, pitcher Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates attempted to bean every batter in the Reds lineup in retaliation for a run-in two years earlier with a racist Cincinnati security guard.

That dates to the spring of '74. It's easy to check that kind of thing nowadays, and sure enough, here's the game:

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/PIT/PIT197405010.shtml

Hits Rose, hits Morgan, hits Driessen--two of the three players were black!--walks Perez, gets taken out. (I don't see anywhere that he was ejected.)

Everyone knows the LSD story by now, but I don't remember ever hearing about that game before. Amazing.

hadn't heard it had anything to do with a racist security guard -- the usual story is that he thought the pirates were too easily pushed around by the reds, whatever that means, and decided to 'set a tone'

Googled "Dock Ellis racist security guard" and came up with this:

http://www.cosmicbaseball.com/jcba18g.html

The security guard's there, but then the game is explained the same way you explain it (which makes more sense to me--throwing at black players to avenge a racist act seems odd, but then Ellis was definitely that). The story says Perez walked only because he got out of the way of various pitches, and that Ellis even got to throw at Bench twice before getting pulled. Still no mention of an ejection.

http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2014/10/29/future-eligibles/

whoa, there is a Donald Hall book about him, must read

I never realized he was "Ellis D" in the boxscore.

Anyone seen the dockumentary?

http://www.nonoadockumentary.com/

^I finally watched the Dock doc, which is quite touching for an archives-and-talking-heads job. About race and the drug culture in the '60s and '70s as much as baseball.

Apparently the '76 Yankees were just as much a "party" team as the '86 Mets.