In 1970, Scipio Spinks and Dock Ellis were young Major League pitchers — Spinks for the Astros, Ellis for the Pirates — who had taken the era’s free-love-and-free-drugs ethos to heart.

“We were the two guys everybody said wouldn’t live to see 30,” says Spinks, talking to The Post about the release of “No No: A Dockumentary,” a new film about Ellis, who gained notoriety for pitching a 1970 no-hitter under the influence of LSD.

“I pitched every game in the major leagues under the influence of drugs,” he once said of his 12-year baseball career.

Ellis, who died in 2008, speaks in the film via interview footage.



We did everything, tried everything and partied all the time. We would try to see who could out-amphetamine one another… Dock was a little bit more intense than I was. He did things higher and harder than anyone else. - Scipio Spinks, ex-MLB pitcher

According to him, speed pills were consumed by around 90 percent of major-league players at the time.

“We did everything, tried everything and partied all the time. We would try to see who could out-amphetamine one another,” says Spinks, noting that the normal dose was 5 milligrams. “If he took 10 milligrams, I would take 20. If I took 20, he would take 25. Dock was a little bit more intense than I was. He did things higher and harder than anyone else.”

Jeff Radice, the film’s director, says that Ellis’ use of pills became a full-on addiction. “It got to the point that when he went to a game and wasn’t pitching, he had to take greenies [a form of speed] just to be able to concentrate and sit on the bench,” says Radice.

And there seemed to be no limit to Ellis’s drug use.

“By 1970, he had clearly experimented with LSD,” says Radice. “He had this room . . . that he called the Dungeon. He had a black light, and he would [take LSD], and he would listen to Jimi Hendrix. That was one of his little rituals.”

But as wild as Ellis was, few could have predicted what he’d pull off on June 12, 1970, in a game against the San Diego Padres.

According to Ellis, he flew into San Diego on June 11, one day before his next pitching assignment. He took LSD, then went to a friend’s house in LA. He partied, fell asleep and took more LSD when he woke up.

“He was on such a bender that he lost track of time — he was partying for 24, 36 hours straight,” says Radice. “When he woke, he thought it was a day off, but he had already gone through 24 hours.”

Ellis rushed to San Diego for the game. He pitched wildly through all nine innings, walking eight and hitting a batter, but managed to pitch a no-hitter in a 2-0 victory. After the game, says Spinks, someone asked Ellis if he saw the game’s final play.

He responded, “Did I see it? You should have seen it the way I saw it.”

Of course, Ellis didn’t go public about what condition he was in at the time, so no one who saw the game knew what they had just witnessed.

“He said that [his teammates] knew he was high, but not what he was high on,” says Radice. “None of his teammates really knew what acid was. They just thought it was Dock being ‘Crazy Dock.’ ”

Spinks says that two weeks later, Ellis told him about the LSD, and that he had been unable to see which players he was facing, making out only whether they had been left- or right-handed.

“I didn’t know if I was facing Hank Aaron, Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle,” said Ellis. “I was just out there throwing a baseball and having a great time.”

In the mid-’70s, Donald Hall, the former poetry editor of the Paris Review, who would become our country’s poet laureate in 2006, wrote a biography of Ellis. The book’s early drafts included the LSD tale, but as Ellis had just joined the Yankees, he was afraid the admission might anger team owner George Steinbrenner, so the info was removed from the book.



I didn’t know if I was facing Hank Aaron, Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle. I was just out there throwing a baseball and having a great time. - Dock Ellis

The story went public in 1984, when a Pittsburgh journalist interviewed Ellis about the game, and gained traction with a new generation in 2009, when artist James Blagden turned a 2008 NPR interview Ellis gave into an animated video that went viral.

Over the years, some have questioned Ellis’ story, saying they would have noticed had he been on that strong a drug.

Still, both Radice and Spinks, as well as the people in the film who knew Ellis personally, believe his tale. Spinks disputes just one aspect of it. He believes that Ellis knew exactly what day it was, and took LSD before the game on purpose.

“He knew he was pitching. He wasn’t that out of control,” says Spinks. “He just decided he wanted to see what it was like.”

Later in life, Ellis, who ultimately got straight and became a drug counselor, expressed shame about what he had done. While the LSD no-hitter kept him in the public eye, he came to see it not as a point of pride, but as a sign that his drug use might have robbed him of his greatest professional memory.

Director Ron Howard, who cast Ellis in his 1986 film “Gung Ho,” says in the film that Ellis talked to him about the no-hitter with embarrassment.

“It wasn’t like some cool calling card,” said Howard. “He was talking about his own disappointment in himself.”

“Dock didn’t remember too much of the game. That was one of his major regrets,” says Radice. “It was the high point of his baseball career, and it’s this black spot on his memory.”