Balls Out

Before the game, Ellis let it be known that NL manager Sparky Anderson would never start him, because the announced AL starter, Vida Blue, was also black. This launched the inevitable national sportswriters' debate about how racism didn't exist in 1971, and how dare he and why would he and so on and whatnot. The flap had its intended effect: Anderson, grumblingly, started Ellis, and the pitcher soon became one of the most reviled players in the league, branded a troublemaker and miscreant. Ellis was untroubled by the affair; as with most things in which he believed, he openly declared he "didn't give a fuck what anybody thought." With possibly one exception: A few days after the All-Star game, Ellis received a letter in the mail.

"I read your comments in our paper the last few days," it read, "and wanted you to know how much I appreciate your honesty. The news media, while knowing full well you are right and honest, will use every means to get back at you. Honors that should be yours will bypass you and the pressures will be great--try not to be left alone. There will be times when you ask yourself if it's worth it all. I can only say, Dock, it is.

Sincerely,

Jackie Robinson"

---

What's weird is that sometimes it felt like a balloon. Sometimes it felt like a golf ball. But he could always get it to the plate. Getting it over the plate was another matter entirely. Sometimes he couldn't see the hitter. Sometimes he couldn't see the catcher. But if he could see the hitter, he'd guess where the catcher was. And he had a great catcher back there. Jerry May. You could make mistakes with him, and he would compensate. He'd know if he called for a curveball, he could look at the follow-through of your arm and see if you were gonna hang it. So he'd get ready to slide and block. Also, he had this reflective tape on his fingers that was by far the easiest thing to see.

Ellis had no idea what the score was, and he knew he'd been wild--he ended with eight walks, one hit batsman and the bases loaded at least twice--but here it was, bottom of the seventh, and he was still in the game.

The hardest part was between innings. He was sure his teammates knew something was up. They had all been acting strange since the game began. Solution: Do not look at teammates. Do not look at scoreboard. Must not make eye contact. His spikes--that's what he concentrated on. Pick up tongue depressor, scrape the mud, repeat. Must. Clean. Spikes.

Sometime in the fifth or sixth, he sensed someone next to him. Looking. He turned. It was rookie infielder Dave Cash.

"Dock," Cash said. "You've got a no-hitter going."

Cash, apparently unaware of the (insanely well-known) superstition that a pitcher never talks about a no-hitter until it's complete for fear of jinxing it, was immediately piled upon by several outraged teammates. Ellis, meanwhile, looked at the scoreboard.

Huh.

Yeah.

After the eighth, during which he'd watched outfielder Matty Alou snag an almost certain base hit, Ellis walked off the field and looked Cash straight in the eye.

"Still got my no-no!" Ellis declared.

---

Ellis' last good year as a pitcher came in 1977, his first of two with the Rangers. In the interim, his reputation as a wildman had grown exponentially. There were the hair curlers (which inspired a spread in Ebony about his hairstyles), the biography, the beaning of the Cincinnati Reds. There was a July 1976 incident, after being traded to the Yankees before that season, in which Ellis decided to retaliate against Reggie Jackson for showboating after a brutal home run in the 1971 All-Star game--and hit him in the face with a fastball. Jackson was carried off the field on a stretcher; four years later, he'd tell reporters that his face was still numb. Ellis had been maced by security guards, threatened by his own managers and declared the most unpopular Pittsburgh Pirate ever.

Rangers owner Brad Corbett didn't care about any of it.

"I absolutely loved him," says Corbett, who acquired Ellis from the A's in June 1977. "The biggest misperception about Dock is that he's this untamed, self-destructive wildman. And part of that is true; he was crazy, but in a good way. He was fun. He had a way of keeping people loose. He was a practical joker. He had character. Everybody loves to talk about that LSD no-hitter, but come on. Stuff like that was happening all the time. Everybody was doing something. One relief pitcher we traded for, I went to meet him in New York at Studio 54. And I walk in and look over and say to myself, 'Hmm. Is that sugar?'

"And of course, number one, he was a damn good pitcher and a terrific competitor. In fact, at one point, we traded him to Cleveland, and I felt so bad about losing him that I called the trade off. And by that point, he was at the end of his career, and his arm was fading. It clearly wasn't the right business decision, but I just couldn't let Dock go."

The Rangers' 1977 starting rotation of Ellis (who went 10-6 with a 2.90 ERA after he joined the team), Ferguson Jenkins, Doyle Alexander and Bert Blyleven remains the strongest starting four the club has ever had; that team's 94 wins, which placed it second behind Kansas City's 102, were the strongest whiff of the playoffs the Rangers would get until the AL West was pared down to four teams, making it easier for the Rangers to climb to the top of a very short pile.

But Corbett was right: Ellis' arm was fading, his body haunted by a problem that, like racism, he had first experienced upon arriving in the majors. One day early in his career, Ellis was lying on the dugout bench, "half-assed asleep and hungover," and found out he was supposed to pitch. An older player leaned over and handed Ellis a plastic cup.

"I said, 'What the hell is that?'" Ellis recalls. "He said, 'Juice.' I drank it, and next thing I know, I was out there on the mound like [Juan] Marechal. And I liked it."