More Baseball In A Purple Haze

Baseball is still very much on my mind, and I had intended to provide a few anecdotes about Bobo Newsom in my post today, but my plan was sidetracked after I went to see Robin Williams perform his stand-up act live last night before a sold-out crowd at the Berkeley Repertory Theater.  It was an exhausting experience for I spent two hours laughing, and it's hard to even remember all the topics that were covered because Robin Williams's mind is so quick, his wit so sharp, and his energy seemingly unlimited, as he keeps moving quickly from one subject to the next.  I do recall, however, that he did describe in wonderful detail what it must have been like for the late Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates, when he pitched a no-hitter while hallucinating on LSD.  Intrigued by this story, I decided to save Bobo Newsom for another day. I did a little research and found that, indeed, it was on June 12, 1970, that Dock Ellis pitched a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres. While high on LSD. Ellis walked eight batters and hit one during this game. In a 2008 interview that was excerpted on the Public Radio Program, Weekend America, Ellis explained in great detail what he actually had experienced in his "purple haze." He said that he took Benzedrine to try to even things out right before he warmed up, that sometimes he saw his catcher. Jerry May, and sometimes he didn't, that the ball kept changing in size and weight, that for much of the game he had no idea what the score was, and that he had no interest in holding runners on base. For more about this see  Big Hair and Plastic Grass: A Funky Ride Through Baseball and America in the Swinging '70s  by Dan Epstein, published by Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press, LLC. Also check out a wonderful animated short made by James Blagden,"Dock Ellis & the LSD No-No." This film uses parts of the soundtrack of the Ellis interview of 2008.  The URL is www.dockshort.com/dockshort/.