a missing "eephus"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Check HDAS 1.  (It's Expert Recommended ! ! ! )

JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: a missing "eephus"
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>From today's NYT on yesterday's Yankee game:

The New York Times
July 6, 2005 Wednesday

SECTION: Section D; Column 3; Sports Desk; BASEBALL; Pg. 1
HEADLINE: Johnson Delivers Strong Performance on Short Rest for the Yankees
BYLINE: By TYLER KEPNER

There are bad days at the office, and there are days like the one
the Yankees inflicted on the Baltimore Orioles yesterday. Before
Randy Johnson allowed a base runner, the Yankees had 10 runs and 11
hits, including three homers. The Orioles had made three errors.
...
Johnson has mostly hidden his sense of humor since spring training.
Yesterday's game, however, was such a laugher that Johnson even
smiled after lobbing an Eephus pitch to Sal Fasano in the third
inning. Johnson let it go when he noticed catcher John Flaherty was
confused about where to set his target.

======================
I'm mostly familiar with references to the eephus, a VERY slow pitch
with a VERY high arc, in connection with descriptions and films of
the home run Ted Williams hit off one thrown by the premier
eephusite, Rip Sewell, in the 1946 all-star game. (No, I wasn't
there.) In googling the word, I found a very nice description and
history at http://www.answers.com/topic/eephus-pitch
which includes The Kid's home run and much more. (I'm not sure I'd
have called Bill Lee's version--the "Leephus"--a true eephus, based
on films I've seen of the Sewell pitch. But maybe if you smoked as
much dope as the Spaceman claimed he did, it would be hard to tell
the difference.)

I'm sure Dickson has a representative entry for the word. But
there's absolutely nothing in either the OED or AHD4. To give a sense
of its frequency, there are 204 Nexis hits (22 from the New York
Times alone, between 1981 and the present) and 4740 google hits. A
curiously large number, including today's, use upper-case.

Larry

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