Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No

It's a few years old, but still a sweet little animated doc about Dock:



Dock Ellis & The LSD No-No -- An Animated Short Documentary! In celebration of the greatest athletic achievement by a man on a psychedelic journey, No Mas presents the animated tale of Dock Ellis' legendary LSD no-hitter. The piece's unorthodox origins are nearly as compelling as the short film itself. And that's saying something.

Thanks to an unusual partnership between entertainment and apparel brand No Mas, artist turned animator James Blagden, sports culture guru Chris Isenberg, and journalists Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel, who interviewed Ellis before his untimely death in 2008, the film combines the former Pittsburgh Pirate's own account of the 1970 no-hitter he pitched while high on LSD with Blagden's totally original visual style.

The making of the film is a testament to the creative possibilities of the Internet age. In the spring of 2008, radio producers Donnell Alexander and Neille Ilel, recorded a 2-hour interview with Ellis -- possibly his last before his death later that summer -- in which the former Pirate right hander gave a moment by moment account of June 12, 1970, the day he no-hit the San Diego Padres.

Alexander and Ilel's original four-minute audio documentary appeared March 29, 2008 on the public radio program "Weekend America". In early 2009, Isenberg stumbled upon the audio archive of the piece at the show's Web site and commissioned Blagden to create an animated film around the original audio.

The resulting animated short has been hailed as, among other things, among the greatest baseball films ever.