Just got off the phone with former Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis. Dock was very outspoken in his interview, which was exclusive to SCD, and we talked about the new ball that American Memorabilia is offering, which Ellis scripted the interesting inscription "I threw a no hitter on LSD."

Yep, you read it right. Only a few months after Pete Rose wrote the inscription where he admitted to betting on baseball, on a ball, this new inscription is being introduced to collectors.
When I first saw that this ball was being sold, I thought that Ellis and AMI may take a lot of heat for it, so I wanted to get Ellis' thoughts on this.

"It never crossed my mind that it's not the right thing to put on a ball," Ellis said. "That's what I did. It's already been publicized year, after year, after year. I put it on a ball because it's memorabilia."

Ellis also went into other topics, such as his daily ritual of taking bennies and greenies, while pitching.

He also was very opinionated on the steroid scandal and what has been going on in Major League baseball.

Ellis feels the steroid scandal "is a joke," and that steroids don't help players perform. He feels that a player has to have "skill," and that is far more important to their performances than steroids.

He also mentioned how many players were junkies during the days he played and MLB never said a word about it.
Eillis also went into the entire story of how he mistakenly LSD when he had to pitch against San Diego. We all know how that turned out. He threw the no-hitter and the Pirates won 2-0 (even thought he walked eight batters).
I asked him if he thought the drug had anything to do with his performance and if it helped him focused etc.

He told me that it did not and he gave credit to the "baseball gods," as it was just time in their eyes for a no-hitter.

I am still going through the interview tape, so hopefully I will have some more interesting tidbits to share.

As for the ball, you can get one from AMI at the price of $175. According to Dock, he will be signing a limited number of these, "between 50-100."