The Harder They Fall (10 page)

Dock:
Well, I didn’t know until six hours before the game that I was going to pitch. I was in Los Angeles, and the team was playing in San Diego, but I didn’t know it. I had taken LSD … I thought it was an off-day, that’s how come I had it in me. I took the LSD at noon. At 1 p.m., my girlfriend looked at the newspaper and said, “Dock, you’re pitching today!”

That’s when it was $9.50 to fly to San Diego. She got me to the airport at 3:30. I got there at 4:30, and the game started at 6:05 p.m. It was a twi-night doubleheader.

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. 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.

The Pirates won the game 2-0, although I walked eight batters. It was the high point of my baseball career.

Inmate:
Man, sounds like you was going faster than your pitches. [laughter]

Dock:
Let’s settle down. I’d like to talk a little about my father. Remember that I once told you about how if I lost a game, my father was there to pick me up, and if I won a game, we would celebrate together? But when he died, I got mad at God, because I had just started letting my dad into my life again. Even today, I can’t remember my father being at my early baseball games, yet I’ve seen film of some of my old games and there he is. But I still can’t picture it. I’ve blotted it out. Something happened when I was a little boy. My father was taken from me, and I blotted it out. To keep him alive, I blotted out all of my early memories.

Inmate:
So how does that affect you with your son?

Dock:
I came and got my son when he was fourteen, and he stayed with me until now.

Inmate:
He still with you?

Dock:
Yeah, he ain’t going nowhere.

Inmate:
How old is he, Dock?

Dock:
Twenty-four! But I spoiled him like my father spoiled me. I’ve gone to every one of his games. He’d say, “Why you here?” And I’d say, “’Cause I want to be, now get out of my face.” Even when he got into college in Bakersfield, I’d fly to every game. You see, where I was missing my father, I won’t allow me to be missing his life. But I sure do spoil him. I’m trying to break that spoil cycle, but my son is still messing around. Failing to pay his child support. I told him, “You do that and you’ll be over here [prison] with me!”

But I’m trying to be there for him when my father wasn’t there for me. You see, my father was in the hospital a lot, and I hate hospitals. My friend Big Daddy went to see my father more than I did. He had a good relationship with my father. He was there with my father more than I was. He brought that to my attention when I got out of treatment.

But anyway, here I am … where I’m supposed to be.

Inmate:
Hey Dock, you originally from Pittsburgh?

Dock:
No man, I’m originally from Beverly Hills. My father lost an $800,000 bet and we had to move to Watts! [laughter]

Inmate:
If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything?

Dock:
No, I wouldn’t. ’Cause I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Coming to this place is a blessing. A godsend.

Interview with Dock Ellis at Marantha Correctional Facility

Lets see … my first memory of drinking was when I was three years old, drinking vodka, thinking it was water. My parents were looking for me, and I was down in the basement, drunk. They thought I was asleep, but I was drunk. I was just three. I can go that far back. I can remember my grandfather drank Boilermakers: Brew 102 beer and vodka. I thought it was water. He caught me a couple of times and told me, “Boy, don’t drink that water,” so I thought it was water. That’s my earliest recollection of drinking.

My father didn’t drink. My mother didn’t drink. I might have seen my father take two sips of beer when I was a kid, so I didn’t have no influence for drinking from my parents. It was in the streets, trying to belong, being part of the group, in the alley on 135th Street. That’s where it started.

Growing up, I graduated into drugs, smoking dope. We used to use bean shooters. Kids don’t even know what those are, so I tell them straws. We used to put cigarettes in them so we didn’t get the smell on our hands. Tricking our parents. We also used those bean shooters with weed. And always drinking alcohol. I always talk about Harvey Wilson started me drinking rum. Rum and coke. I found out I needed drugs to do certain things and alcohol to do other things.

When I began competing in sports, we drank wine and took Seconal. We called them Red Devils. To dunk a basketball or to run with a football. I remember my sisters telling mother, “Junior’s high, he’s fooling with drugs.” My cover was always to act crazy. “Junior’s crazy, Momma. Look at him. He’s on drugs. Look at him. He’s eating his beans and rice off the floor.” I had dropped the plate, so I just sat there and ate off the floor. I was loaded, so I didn’t care. My sisters were aware of what was happening but not my mother. My father was always gone. My mother never knew. Even up until I went through treatment. She just thought I drank a lot. I remember lifting up the mattress and puking once and then just putting the mattress back down, rather than go to the bathroom. I told my mother I was sick, but I was just drunk.

Once my mother had a doctor come to the house. My friend and I had drunk a half-gallon of scotch and taken some Dexamil. We wanted to stay up all night. Dr. Murakami came to the house and he tells my mother, “Oh,
Mrs. Ellis, don’t worry, he’s just got a hangover.” I thought I was dying.

I was into alcohol pretty good until I really got into baseball. Then I started with cocaine. That was around 1965 in New York. From there I was off and flying. By 1968, I was gone. A lot of things were happening. My father wasn’t around, and I was going through a period of hating God. I learned in treatment that I had a built-in excuse for my using. I always had my father patting me on my back when I won or lost, and he was gone, so I had my excuse. When other guys’ fathers would visit me when I was in baseball is when I went on some terrible runs. I was mad, ’cause my father wasn’t there. I was really hurting.

Drugs got me in a lot of trouble in baseball and in the press. Having to deal with them every day. They would pick at me, and I would pick at them. Many people in Pittsburgh took a liking to me when I played there, and if it wasn’t for them, I’d be dead because I went to places I was not supposed to be. See, I had never run in the streets of California like I was in Pittsburgh. I had never been in a club. These streets became my stomping ground.

The turnaround came for me when I left Pittsburgh. That’s when I went into treatment. I had hit my bottom, because I didn’t know what to do. Baseball was over. Cocaine was over. But I kept drinking, trying to reach that high. I went into treatment because this woman kept telling me I had a drug problem. That, and the scenario with my son. So I said, “It’s time to go.” This was September 30, 1980, which is my sobriety date.

The first person I met in treatment was Dr. Hernandez, a psychologist who told me I was suicidal. I told him he was a damn fool. But then he handed me back a piece of paper that I had given him listing all the drugs I had put in my system. He told me that anyone that would take all of this stuff is trying to kill themselves. Right then I said, “You don’t ever have to worry about me and drugs and alcohol again, ’cause I ain’t no damn fool.” That’s all it took for me to get it. That was it!

And in more than twenty-three years of sobriety, I never looked back. I’m not suicidal. I know that if I ever use again, I’ll kill myself, and that’s the bottom line.

(writer)

I had been a very shy and worried child, with a lot of feelings of not fitting in or being pretty enough or being too smart or more-than or less-than. An egomaniac with an inferiority complex. I had a tremendous amount of pressure on me scholastically, ’cause I was good at it. I was a tennis champion, and I really couldn’t hardly enjoy anything like winning. I couldn’t bear losing because I had such a fragile, fragile sense of myself, all based on how I was doing, which was never quite good enough. And at about the age of twelve … I skipped a grade, I skipped the fourth grade, so when I was twelve or so, in junior high school, I was already a year younger and much less developed, and I had this crazy, wild hair and just didn’t weigh anything at all and felt really ugly and just so desperate to be loved.

Some girls brought some beer to a dance. This was all in Tiburon, California, and we went out back to a baseball field and drank it. I’d had beer before. My older brother and I had already started drinking. We always snuck sips or were given some. I remember chugging part of a beer once and getting really tipsy. But the first real intentional drinking I remember was at twelve, and I slugged down a beer as fast as I could with these popular girls and I went back to dance and I felt like I had been given a new lease on life. I felt like I could breathe. I felt like I was prettier, and I just felt that the real me had finally arrived. And after that I just always knew that there were girls that drank and girls that didn’t drink. There were good girls and there were popular girls—bad girls, and by the seventh grade, we were all drinking and smoking dope.