Baseball fans know the eeuphus pitch-that arcing lob made famous by Rip Sewell in the 1946 All-Star Game. Before that, the word eephus referred to insider information. Jim Strain in La Mesa, California, even uses it as a verb, as in, “That dog’s not allowed on the couch, but he’ll eephus his way on somehow.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “Eephus, Ephus”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Good morning.
Good morning. Who is this?
This is Jim Strain. I’m calling from La Mesa, California.
Hi, Jim.
Welcome to the show.
Thank you so much.
What can we help you with?
Well, this is a question from my wife, Diana, actually.
She says that she’s wondered for years about a word that was used in her family.
She thought you guys might know it.
The word is ephus, and she spells it E-P-H-U-S.
But she says that’s her best guess.
And she says it would be like when a dog gets up on the couch and he’s not allowed to,
but he makes himself very quiet and inconspicuous, and he can ephus his way onto the couch.
Nice. Ephus is a verb.
So he’s sneaking in there.
Yeah.
I know dogs who do that.
Yeah, of course. You know, the little head on your lap and all of that.
Yeah. Well, there is an ephus pitch in baseball that’s really sneaky.
I had heard of that one, yes.
You had. Yeah, that’s usually spelled E-E-P-H-U-S.
And that’s a high pitch that goes way up.
It looks like a child throw through it.
Yeah, yeah.
It’s an overhand throw, but it goes about 25 feet in the air,
and then it drops suddenly in the strike zone.
And it’s a really risky pitch for pitchers.
I mean, batters hate it because it goes like two-thirds as fast as most balls,
and so sometimes they miss it completely.
But other times it goes into the stands.
But it’s a stunt pitch, right?
Yeah, you can see videos of this online.
They’re pretty funny.
There was a famous guy, what was his name, Rip Sewell, who was with the Pittsburgh Pirates,
who made that famous in the 1940s in the All-Star Games.
I’ve heard people talk about it, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it yet.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
You should go online.
Actually, we can link to a video on our website about that.
Oh, that would be great.
And a little older than that, there’s an ephys that was used for a time to mean insider information, inside dope.
The lowdown.
The lowdown.
The connection there, again, is that it’s something sneaky, something not quite above board that’s not on the up and up.
Well, that kind of sounds related.
Yeah, it likely is.
Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?
You know, slang tends to fluctuate like that with its meanings.
But I wonder where your wife and her family learned that word.
Well, Diana got it from her mom.
And her mom said she got it from her husband, who was Di’s dad.
And he was from Kansas.
But she said she never heard it used that way outside of her family.
And were they big baseball fans?
Not particularly, no.
But it’s one of those things that, you know, I’ve heard, you know,
Diane and I have been married for so long, I’ve heard it for years,
and I don’t think I ever heard it before her, but I don’t know if I did or not.
I don’t know, Grant, have you heard e-ficing used as a verb like that?
I have not.
I never have, no.
Not for that.
But I like it.
It’s perfect for dogs.
He’s e-ficing his way onto the couch and you’re not looking.
Yeah, ephusing stuff off the table.
That’s my experience with dogs.
There was one more variant, ephus office, who also meant inside dope back in the day.
Yeah, yeah.
We’re probably talking 40s or 50s, as far back as we can trace it.
So popularized by baseball, and maybe it has to do with that little extra ephus that you put on a pitch or something.
I’ve seen that, you know, the little extra whatever, you know.
Not quite the English, the little extra American that you put on the ball, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, thanks for calling.
Well, thank you so much.
You’ve been very helpful.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Yeah, that EFIS pitch is also known as a blooper ball or a parachute or a balloon ball or a rainbow pitch.
So it just goes straight up, and it comes almost straight down right on top of the plate.
Yeah.
And you can’t do your normal gauging of speed and distance.
Yeah, yeah.
You hear these big guys, and they’re at the plate.
And they’re whiffing it.
Yeah, completely.
So we will link to video of that online.
It’s pretty funny.
The Red Sox’ Bill Lee, aka “The Spaceman,” threw it in 1975. It worked the first 3 or 4 times in the World Series, and then one of Cincinnati’s power hitters timed it right and hit it all the way to Kenmore Square.