eephus pitch
or e·phus pitch
[ ee-fuhs pich ]
/ ˈi fəs ˌpɪtʃ /
noun Baseball.
a junk pitch of extremely low speed and with a characteristically high arc: He baffled many a hitter with his eephus pitch.
Also
Ee·phus pitch,
E·phus pitch.
Origin of eephus pitch
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