Pitch-Drunk Love

Jacob has already dispatched the latest alcohol abuse numbers cooked up by the Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse in a suitably brutal fashion. But sometimes I like to take such spew and run with it.

So by CASA's thinking, two or three drinks per day can be excessive. Man, that would make for a helluva lot of high-functioning problem drinkers, wouldn't it? And if millions can function well with such a problem, well, then what is the problem? Worse, what if booze helps them function well? How would we tell and what should we do about?

Now comes news that New York Yankees pitcher David Wells has "half-drunk" when he pitched a perfect game in 1998. Wells says he got blasted at a Saturday Night Live cast party and took the mound with a killer hangover.

Wells—a serial binge drinker in CASA-speak—now joins Pittsburgh's Dock Ellis on the list of pitchers who have done one of the hardest things in sports while polluted. Ellis says his no-hitter in 1970 came while he was on LSD.

Ellis went on to work as a drug counselor. I think it is safe to say Wells won't be going to work for CASA.

Comments

[Steve]

Hi. I’m Steve and I had 16 beers in the last week. I..I..know I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. THEY JUST TASTE SO DAMN GOOD!!!!!

[Matt]

The story that Dock Ellis tells of that historic day is one of the greatest sports stories of all time.

[Anonymous]

Ummm… I get the point, but a no-hitter and a perfect game aren’t the same thing.

[harry tuttle]

Uh, if he had a no-hitter, how could he be on LSD?

[David Moynihan]

In his biography, The Mick, Mantle said he thought Don Larsen (who was known to tipple) had had a few before pitching that game back on 10/8/56.

Of course, Larsen went 3-21 for the O’s two years prior, and 1-10 for the A’s a couple years later, so maybe there’s something for the booze nazis to work with about long-term performance and drinking…