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Monday, Jun 20, 2005
dock of the baseball
"One day last month, Ellis walked into the Victor Valley penitentiary, where, for the past two years, he's worked as a drug counselor. He said he had a surprise for his class. HBO Sports was doing a piece on him, and they'd dug up an old black-and-white videotape of that June 1970 game against the Pirates. To that point, Ellis swore that no tape of the game existed, and he'd never seen himself pitch high on LSD. And this would be the first time he was watching it. As the game enters the ninth, it gets to two outs, three balls and two strikes, and then the tape cuts straight to a postgame interview.
"I remember getting that last out," Ellis says. "And turning around and saying, 'A fucking no-hitter!' It didn't really hit me until the next morning, when I was less high, and I got a live phone call from CBS or ABC or something wanting to interview me. They kept telling me to turn the TV down. Too much feedback.""