Some of you might be old enough to remember a time when for one admission at the movie theater, you got a double feature, a cartoon, and maybe a short subject.
Welcome back.
This week I finally had a chance to watch No No: A Dockumentary, about the life and wild times of Dock Ellis, an African-American pitcher, primarily with the Pittsburgh Pirates, but also spending part of his 12-year career with the NY Yankees, Oakland As, Texas Rangers, and NY Mets, before coming full circle with the Buccos before retiring in 1979.
I expected No No to be a neo-typical Ken Burnsian type of project and was pleasantly surprise. Sure, many of those elements — the photos, the talking heads — were present; how can you avoid that these days. But the production values were high and went a long way in creating a drug-induced quality. I still find it hard to believe Ellis’ claim that he pitched every one of his Major League games –345 according to Baseball-Reference — high. Of course, “high” is a relative term. No No is very thorough in explaining the rampant use of amphetamines in helping players get through the grueling season.
Ellis’ main claim to fail was his revelation that he pitched his no-hitter against the San Diego Padres on June 12, 1970 under the influence of LSD. I assumed that would be the heart of No No. But it covers a lot more territory, including the continuing difficulties of African-American players in the turbulent sixties and seventies and high points (you should pardon the expression) of Ellis career, including the first all-black lineup to take the field.
His addictions finally caught up to him, and Ellie became a substance abuse counselor towards the end of his life. He was memorialized on screen by several of his old friends. It was also bittersweet to see his former teammates, including Enos Cabell, Bob Oliver, Bob Watson, Steve Blass, Bruce Kison, and others, recall the wild and crazy days.
Funny and sad at the same time, No No: A Documentary won for best editing category at the Boulder International Film Festival in 2014 and was for the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance. Well-deserved.
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The “selected short” for the week is The Schedule Makers, a “30 for 30” ESPN production.
This charming piece, weighing in at just under 13 minutes, gives a brief overview into the process that was handled by what amounts to a mom-and-pop business, although Holly and Henry Stephenson, who created the scheduled for MLB from 1982-2004, might bristle at that categorization.
Most of the information for The Schedule Makers — directed by Joseph Garner and produced by Eve Marson — comes directly from the Stephensons. The only other on-screen commentator is baseball writer/broadcaster Buster Olney. Since there is a lot of math involved, along with terms like “combinational optimization,” I’ll just say that there’s a tremendous amount of consideration that goes into the process. Not the least of this are the special requests made by the team for a season that includes 30 teams playing more than 2,400 games over 180 days and close to one million miles of travel. For example, the Boston Red Sox always want to be home for Patriots Day. Other teams may or may not want to be around when other local events are taking place. When Cal Ripken Jr. set the all-time record for consecutive games played, the Stephenson’s had to calculate when that would happen so that event could take place in Baltimore.
Then there’s the weather. Planning games in April on the East Coast has its own set of concerns, as we learn.
Perhaps because they weren’t big-time mathematicians from MIT, the Stephensons had to “prove themselves” year after year. MLB finally replaced them in 2005 in favor of computer-generated programs. That obviously wasn’t foolproof. If it was, we wouldn’t have had NY Yankees future Hall of Famer Mariano Rivera winding finishing up his career against in 2013 the Astros in Houston.
According to Holly Stephenson, creating the schedules was somewhat akin to building jigsaw puzzles. She must be talking about the 5,000-piece versions, because this stuff is damn hard, at least to this layman.
You can watch the entire mini-doc right here. You’re welcome.
is available on Amazon.com,
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