You might have heard the story.

June 12, 1970.

Ellis threw a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres and later admitted he had pitched the game while on LSD.

For many baseball fans, that’s all they know about the former Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander.

That’s the problem with a story like this.
It becomes infamous and overshadows everything that came afterward.

Ellis was never boring. He wore curlers in his hair during pregame warmups.

He challenged baseball’s establishment.

He spoke openly about racism when few players were willing to.

And, of course, there was the no-hitter.

Eight walks. One hit batter. No hits.

The story became baseball folklore:

Dock Ellis—the pitcher who threw a no-no on acid.

It became that wild, hard-to-believe story.

And it reduced a complicated man to that one crazy day.

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Truth is, Dock could really pitch.

In 1971, he won 19 games, started the All-Star Game for the National League, and helped the Pirates win the World Series.

He pitched 12 seasons and won 138 games.

But behind the talent and defiance was a serious addiction.

The no-hitter wasn’t an isolated experiment.

Ellis later claimed he never pitched a major-league game without the assistance of drugs or alcohol.

By the spring of 1980, his career was over. His marriage was over.

And Ellis finally understood that he needed help.

He reached out to former Dodgers pitcher Don Newcombe, who had overcome his own battle with alcoholism.

Newcombe arranged for Ellis to enter a rehab center in Arizona. Ellis stayed for 40 days.

Then he began a second career that almost nobody talks about.

Dock Ellis became a substance-abuse counselor. The man remembered for pitching high began helping others get sober.

He worked in treatment programs.

Counseled prisoners.

Spoke at schools.

Helped ballplayers struggling with addiction.

And eventually became the director of a substance-abuse program in Los Angeles.

He didn’t hide from what he had done.

He used it.

Ellis was living proof that it was possible to get clean and sober.

He spoke about what drugs had cost him.

Relationships.

His career.

His health.

There was no pretending that the no-hitter was some harmless adventure from baseball’s freewheeling past.

Ellis understood the damage.

For nearly three decades, he tried to keep other people from making the same mistakes.

The work followed him home.

Ellis met Hjordis, who became his wife, while counseling her sisters.

His daughter Jasmine remembers waking up and finding former inmates and their wives sitting at the family table.

Dock had invited them home.

Sobriety couldn’t erase the damage Dock had caused.

But it allowed him to build a different kind of home—one centered on helping people find their way back.

Ellis died in 2008 from liver disease. He was 63.

Most of the headlines mentioned the LSD no-hitter.

Of course they did.

Hjordis and Jasmine later created the Dock Ellis Foundation, serving missing people, abuse survivors, and families too often overlooked.

Baseball turned Dock Ellis’s addiction into folklore.

He turned it into a reason to help other people, long after the cheering ended.

Most people remember the first act of Dock Ellis. The second deserves to be remembered, too.

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Have a former player you’ve always wondered about?

Hit Reply and send me the name.

Let’s go find out.

Have a great weekend.

John Boxley
High N Tight