eephus pitch

or e·phus pitch

[ ee-fuhs pich ]

noun

, Baseball.

1. a junk pitch of extremely low speed and with a characteristically high arc:

   He baffled many a hitter with his eephus pitch.

Word History and Origins

Origin of eephus pitch¹

First recorded in 1940–45; name attributed to Maurice Van Robays (1914–65), outfielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, for a kind of junk pitch developed in the early 1940s by Truett “Rip” Sewell (1907–89), pitcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates; further origin uncertain. The proposed derivation from Hebrew efeṣ “nothing, zero” is considered unlikely