Going Deep on the Eephus Pitch
Today’s rabbit hole begins with a bummer — or at least I found it to be a bummer. On Monday, Jack Suwinski did an amazing thing, something that only Barry Bonds has ever done before. The guy hit two — TWO — splash-ball home runs into McCovey Cove at Oracle Park.
Two splash-ball homers in the same game? Jack Suwinski? Awesome, right?
Well … sort of. The first one was awesome, for sure. Suwinski saw an 85-mph changeup from the Giants’ Anthony DeSclafani and pounded it 396 feet into the water. Great.
The second one, though … he hit it off a 59-mph “eephus” pitch thrown by rookie second baseman Brett Wisely. Ugh. These position players pitching have become a real scourge. Wisely threw six so-called “eephus” pitches (which are not actually eephus pitches, but we’ll get to that), and Pittsburgh’s utility infielder Chris Owings threw a bunch himself, and whatever fun that once came with seeing non-pitchers throw slop in blowout games is long gone, at least for me.
But my issue here is with the idea that these guys are throwing eephus pitches.
Let me tell you a little bit about the real Eephus pitch.
The eephus was invented by a character named Rip Sewell. Rip was probably more of a football prospect than baseball when he was young, but he grew up in a baseball family — three of his cousins played in the big leagues — and after he flunked out of college, he decided to give baseball a go.
For a time, it seemed like his career was dead on arrival because in 1934 he got into a fight with Hank Greenberg. Sewell admitted he made a crack about Greenberg’s Jewishness but insisted that Greenberg started it by insulting Sewell’s Southern background. Greenberg and others said that Sewell started it and wouldn’t shut up. Whatever, Greenberg pummeled Sewell and, shortly afterward, he was released.
“We’ve got 30 pitchers and only one first baseman,” Tigers manager Mickey Cochrane is said to have told Sewell. “What do you think I’m going to do?”
Sewell resurfaced with the Pirates a few years later and pitched pretty well — he went 16-5 with a 2.80 ERA in 1940 and even received a down-ballot MVP vote. He was always trying to get by on a slow slider, a subpar fastball and a lot of guile. In 1941 he led the league in losses with 17 and then went on the hunting trip that changed his life and gave us one of baseball’s most wonderful stories.