Patrick Hubry retells the amazing story of Dock Ellis:
The club arrived on Thursday, an off day. Ellis rented a car. Dropped a tab of acid. Drove north to his hometown, Los Angeles. He showed up at the home of Mitzi, the girlfriend of an old childhood buddy, Al Rambo. The two drank screwdrivers. Smoked marijuana. Talked through the night. Eventually, Ellis fell asleep. Possibly for an hour. Probably less. Around noon — maybe earlier — he took another dose of LSD. Meanwhile, Mitzi flipped through a newspaper. "Dock, you better get up," she said. "You gotta go pitch!"
"What are you talking about?" he said. "I pitch tomorrow." Mitzi gave him the sports page. Ellis scanned the newsprint. Padres-Pirates. Doubleheader. Friday. Today. Game time: 6:05 p.m. Game 1 starter: Ellis, D. "Oh, wow," he said. "What happened to yesterday?"
The stunning result:
Two hours later, he would be standing on the mound at San Diego Stadium, throwing baseballs he couldn't always feel, in the general direction of batters he didn't always see, trying very, very hard not to fall over.
Ellis ended up pitching a no-hitter. Much later, he became a drug addiction counselor. Update from a reader: "Though Robin Williams' description is hilarious, be sure to check out this video of Dock talking about the incident in his own words":
The Dish 