Screw Steroids, Dropping Acid is the Best Way to Baseball Immortality

If you ask most people what the single greatest athletic accomplishment of all time is, you’re going to get a variety of answers. Wayne Gretzky’s 212 point season (Canadians), Michael Phelps' eight gold medals (people who think swimming is a sport), Wilt Chamberlin’s 10,000 sexual partners (Herpes patients), and several other herculean tasks are debated. Except of course for one achievement, which is, without question, regarded as the single greatest achievement in the history of sport.

In 1970, after dropping Acid – Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis threw a perfect game, while battling drug-induced hallucinations on the mound. At one point he thought Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, couldn't feel his face, and even saw Jimi Hendrix in the batter's box.

Check out the brilliant video below by animation wizard James Blagden and sports freaks No Mas, narrated by Ellis himself, which takes us through the truly greatest athletic feat of all time.

No Mas Presents: Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No by James Blagden

In celebration of the greatest athletic achievement by a man on a psychedelic journey, No Mas and artist James Blagden proudly present the animated tale of Dock Ellis' legendary LSD no-hitter. In the past few years weve heard all too much about performance enhancing drugs from greenies to tetrahydrogestrinone, and not enough about performance inhibiting drugs. If our evaluation of the records of athletes like Mark McGwire, Roger Clemens, Marion Jones, and Barry Bonds needs to be revised downwards with an asterisk, we submit that that Dock Ellis record deserves a giant exclamation point. Of the 263 no-hitters ever thrown in the Big Leagues, we can only guess how many were aided by steroids, but we can say without question that only one was ever thrown on acid.

Sadly, the great Dock Ellis died last December at 63. A year before, radio producers Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel, had recorded an interview with Ellis in which the former Pirate right hander gave a moment by moment account of June 12, 1970, the day he no-hit the San Diego Padres. Alexander and Ilels original four minute piece appeared March 29, 2008 on NPRs Weekend America. When we stumbled across that piece this past June, Blagden and Isenberg were inspired to create a short animated film around the original audio.

Source: No Mas