I consider myself a pretty avid historian when it comes to baseball, but until I heard a song about this event, I had no idea that it ever happened.

In the hall of fame, there is a wall, nearly covered with a ball from each of the no hit games in the history of Major League Baseball. Between 1876 and 2010, there have been 268 of the suckers, which may sound like a lot, but when you consider we've got 30 Major League Baseball teams playing 162 games a season, that's 4860 chances a year, which understandably drops as you go further back in time, to less teams and less games in the schedule.

A no hitter, for those that don't know, is a game in which the pitcher retires every batter on the other team without allowing any hits. Batters can still be hit by pitches, they can walk, there can be errors and they can reach via other methods, but there can be no hits. Three outs times nine innings. 27 total outs. No hits. You've got to face each batter at least three times.

On the 12th of June in 1970, Dock Ellis threw a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates. He got his 27 outs without allowing a hit, but he still managed to allow a baserunner an inning, hitting one and walking eight. It's not too incredible yet. Plenty of folks get lucky. But Dock was something else entirely.

He was high on LSD.

Or at least that's what came out in 1984. From his own admission:

I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the (catcher's) glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me.

I've never seen video of this game. I'm not sure if baseball doesn't want me to or not, but it's getting bigger and bigger in my mind without it.

Dock did an interview in 2008 and talked about the event extensively.

No Mas made a video for it, and it's incredible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vUhSYLRw14

The words are Dock's from the 2008 video, but the video was made shortly after Dock's untimely passing later that year. He was only 63.

This is the song that turned me onto the event.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEWJuDCxn70

And this another one that I'm pretty fond of.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wg9DXRP4Ywo

Rest in peace, Dock. Rest in peace.