Dock Ellis was certainly a capable major-league starting pitcher. That he logged in 12 seasons in MLB, attained double-digits in victories nine of those years and helped his team to a World Series title are all indications that he was doing something right.

Of the 138 victories Ellis notched during his career, one stands out in particular and will be forever part of baseball lore, and not just because it was a no-hitter. This performance came with some chemical enhancements, the story goes.

On June 12, 1970, the Pittsburgh Pirates’ Ellis tossed a “no-no” against the San Diego Padres, a lowly expansion team in its second year of existence, at then-San Diego Stadium. Despite walking eight batters and hitting another, Ellis came away unscratched in the hits allowed column in the 2-0 victory. What makes this no-hitter different from others is that Ellis claimed to have been stoned on LSD while on the mound, and while doubts regarding the veracity of this tale have emerged in certain circles over the years, it appears to be true.

Ellis and the Pirates had arrived in San Diego for a scheduled two-night double-header. With time to kill, Ellis decided to head up to his native Los Angeles for an afternoon of partying with his girlfriend and a friend. At one point during the afternoon, the two companions looked at a newspaper sports section’s schedule of National League games that day, perusing the probable pitchers listing. Guess who they found out was slated to pitch in the first game, which started around 6 p.m.? Ellis… and he didn’t have the faintest clue.

“I didn’t know it,’’ Ellis once said. “I had taken LSD, I thought it was an off day, that’s how come I had it in me. (The friend and girlfriend) looked at the paper and said, ‘You’re pitching today.’ “That’s when it was $9.50 to fly to San Diego. She got me to the airport at 3:30, I got there (SD) at 4:30, and the game started at 6:05. I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched, I had the feeling of euphoria.’’

The Padres certainly couldn’t have been feeling high after being held to nary a hit, despite being one of the top home-run producing clubs in the National League that season.

“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,’’ Ellis once said. “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 gum until it turned to powder. They say I had about three or 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.’’

“I was high as a Georgia pine,’’ Ellis said of that evening. Ellis’ alleged LSD-addled exploits on the mound against the Padres that night have been documented in books and at least one animated short film. Chris Isenberg, who produced the animated short, “Dock Ellis and the LSD No-No,” once said this to the New York Times: “I do think it’s a singularly majestic feat. I have one experience on acid, and it involved staying up for 72 straight hours and nearly having a nervous breakdown. “I can’t imagine pitching a no-hitter on it. It’s like a perfect game times a million.’’

Ellis was certainly a quirky figure, an iconoclast in an era where virtually everyone in baseball toed the line of management. He was known to show up on the field before the game with curlers in his hair, and Ellis wore a batting helmet covered with felt, not unlike a pool table. He was also a switch-hitter (a rarity for a pitcher), even though he couldn’t really hit from either side of the plate. Then there were a couple of incidents involving the Cincinnati Reds, a powerhouse squad at the time. These took place the season after Ellis won 19 games and was one of the fulcrums of Pittsburgh’s world title team.

In May of 1972, Ellis was maced by a security guard while attempting to enter Cincinnati’s Riverfront Stadium. The guard accused Ellis of not identifying himself and threatening him with a closed fist. Ellis shot back that he was simply showing the guard his World Series ring, proving that he was a legitimate member of the Pirates.

Things were even more bizarre two years later, when the Reds visited Pittsburgh. As revenge for the tussle with the security guard, Ellis vowed to hit every Cincinnati hitter, plunking Pete Rose, Joe Morgan and Dan Driessen in succession in the top of the first inning. No. 4 hitter Tony Perez avoided a couple of pitches and drew a walk, and after Johnny Bench dodged a couple of pitches aimed at his head, Pittsburgh manager Danny Murtaugh yanked Ellis from the game.

Ellis was also outspoken on issues such as civil rights during his days as a player. After his career ended in 1977, Ellis became a drug counselor in Victorville. He died of a liver ailment in Los Angeles on December 19, 2008 at 63.

Baseball players performing on the field while in a chemically-enhanced state is hardly anything novel, going back to the Babe Ruth era and almost assuredly before that. But in those days, there were limited media outlets and the press was very friendly with the players, and hiding nefarious behavior was common.

More recently and closer to home, David Wells, a Point Loma High product, said he was drunk when he pitched a perfect game for the New York Yankees in 1998. And just the other day, ex-Boston Red Sox pitcher Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd said he pitched while high on cocaine at every ballpark during his career.

Boyd spent 10 years in the bigs with the Red Sox, Montreal and Texas. “There wasn’t one ballpark that I probably didn’t stay up all night, until 4 or 5 in the morning, and the same thing is in your system,” Boyd said in an interview with Jon Miller of WBZ radio in Boston. “It ain’t like you had time to go and do it while you were in the game, which I have (done) that. “Some of the best games that I’ve ever, ever pitched in the major leagues, I stayed up all night. I’d say two-thirds of them,” he said. “And if I had went to bed, I would have won 150 ballgames in the time span that I played.”

The 1970 San Diego Padres didn’t win anywhere close to 150 games. Try 63, going along with 99 losses, placing them dead last in the National League. This was the typical second-season club, a rag-tag bunch of mostly has-beens and never-will-bes, but there were some aspects of the team that, at least on paper, didn’t look that bad.

For example, despite playing in San Diego Stadium, perhaps more of a home-run killer than Petco Park, the Padres were third in the league with 172 homers. First baseman Nate Colbert led the way with 38, and the starting outfield of Cito Gaston (who would go on to win back-to-back World Series in ’92 and ‘93 as manager of the Toronto Blue Jays), Ollie “Downtown” Brown and Al Ferrara combined for 65 home runs (52 by Gaston and Brown) and 233 runs batted in. That’s certainly decent production.

The problems: No one else did anything offensively, which explains why the Padres were 11th (out of 12 squads) in the NL in runs scored, next to last in walks, 10th in batting average and led the circuit in strikeouts. And while there were some promising moments when it came to pitching, there obviously weren’t nearly enough of them. However, one potentially eye-popping scenario came down on July 21, 1970.

The New York Mets were trailing the Padres, 1-0, in the bottom of the eighth, and San Diego starting pitcher Clay Kirby was on the cusp of writing his name into the record books. Kirby had given up a first-inning run on a walk, two stolen bases and a fielder’s choice, but had yet to surrender a hit. After the first two Padres were retired in the bottom of the eighth, manager Preston Gomez elected to send Gaston, who had been given the day off, to pinch hit for Kirby. This deprived Kirby a chance to finish the no-hitter, even though it might have been in a losing effort.

Even 42 years later, it is a head-scratcher why Gomez, an experienced baseball man, would have made such a move. After all, the team was going nowhere, and this game could have been a turning point in the 22-year-old Kirby’s young career. Making matters even worse, Gaston struck out to end the inning, reliever Jack Baldschun replaced Kirby, and the Mets eventually wound up with three hits and two more runs in the top of the ninth. Why did Gomez pull Kirby?

“Sure, you want to see someone get a no-hitter,” said Gomez in an interview with the Los Angeles Times years later, “but in this particular game, we were down, 1-0. I didn’t care if we were 160 games behind, I’d do the same thing.’’ After that 1970 game, Kirby said, “I was a little surprised when he took me out.’’ In an interview with the Los Angeles Times 20 years after the fact, Kirby said, “It’s not that I’m bitter. But with a chance to do it again, I’d like to look back and say a baseball I pitched is in the Hall of Fame. “When I try to look back on the logic behind it, I don’t see it. We were 20 or 30 games behind and needed something to drum up interest in the ballclub. A no-hitter would have given the franchise a bigger boost than one more victory. If it had been the seventh game of the World Series, I’d understand it, but we were in last place.’’

Kirby’s point about the Padres garnering more attention for the franchise if he’d been allowed to remain on the mound is well taken. A crowd of 10,373 (no doubt many were New York expatriates) showed up for this game, and this was a relatively massive crowd. The Padres averaged some 8,000 fans per home game, and were in the second installment of finishing last in the league in attendance in each of their first five seasons.

Incredibly, the 1970 season’s crowd count of 643,679 was an increase of over 100,000 from total of the ’60 debut campaign. Kirby died of a heart attack in 1991, Gomez passed in January 2009. Ellis, Kirby and Gomez may no longer be with us, but their place in Padre annals is quite secure, and it all took place in the 1970 season.

There's currently an online petition requesting the MLB Network to rebroadcast the infamous game where Ellis pitched his LSD no-hitter against the San Diego Padres. You can view and sign the petition by clicking HERE.