Rapper/actor Ice Cube is putting his film producer cap back on for a new movie about Major League Baseball pitcher Dock Ellis, who famously pitched a no-hitter for the Pittsburgh Pirates while high on LSD on June 12, 1970. The as-of-yet untitled film is being developed by Ice Cube’s Cube Vision production company, and will star Cube’s son, O’Shea Jackson Jr. The Dock Ellis film follows 2015 N.W.A biopic Straight Outta Compton, which was also included Ice Cube as a producer and O’Shea Jr. in the starring role (playing his father), and received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Screenplay.
Ellis’ LSD no-hitter story is one of the most entertaining and confounding stories in baseball lore, and the film will explore both that fateful game and the player’s character and career as a whole. According to Deadline‘s official announcement of the film, “The ball player was a colorful character — a highly competitive loudmouth who suffered no fools and called out racism when he experienced it. For instance, when he wore curlers in his hair at a workout, he was forbidden to do so ever again by the MLB Commissioner. Although he complied, he was quick to point out the hypocrisy as the MLB allowed a white player to wear a bad, shoulder-length toupee at the same time.”
You can learn about Dock’s storied acid-infused no-hitter in the video produced by No Mas below, in which Ellis himself tells the story of the athletically psychedelic experience over a hilarious animated dramatization (via Victory Journal):
You can also see a clip from the 2014 documentary on Ellis, No No: A Dockumentary Movie, which features footage of Dock pitching and audio of him speaking about his in-game psychedelic experiences (via Movieclips Film Festivals & Indie Films):
We can’t wait to see this historic and nearly impossible-to-believe event on the timelines of both baseball and psychedelic history come to life on the big screen!
[h/t – Yahoo Sports]