Sewell's earliest recorded use of the pitch came in a game against the
Boston Braves at
Forbes Field in
Pittsburgh on June 1, 1943, although as early as the spring training season of 1942 Sewell may have been experimenting with the pitch. After appearing in over 300 major-league games, Rip Sewell gave up only one career
home run off the eephus, to
Ted Williams in the
1946 MLB All-Star Game. Williams challenged Sewell to throw the eephus. Sewell obliged, and Williams fouled off the pitch. However, Sewell then announced that he was going to throw the pitch again, and Williams clobbered it for a home run. When describing the mechanics of the pitch and why he was able to succeed where others had failed, Williams remarked "A little girl could hit that pitch, but you had to provide all the power yourself." Years later, however, Williams admitted that he had been running towards the pitcher's mound as he hit the ball, and photographs reveal that he was in fact a few feet in front of the batter's box when he made contact. Since under Rule 6.06(a) of the
Official Baseball Rules, a batter is out for illegal action when he hits a ball with one or both feet on the ground entirely outside the batter's box, Williams could have been ruled out had it been spotted by the home plate umpire.
Bill "Spaceman" Lee often threw a version of the eephus pitch, referred to as the "Leephus", "spaceball" or "moon ball". Lee was largely successful with the pitch; a notable exception came when he was pitching for the
Boston Red Sox against the Cincinnati Reds in
Game 7 of the 1975 World Series. The Red Sox were up 3–0 when, on a 1–0 count, Lee threw an eephus pitch to
Tony Pérez with a runner on base. The pitch resulted in a towering two-run home run over the
Green Monster that Lee often said afterward "is still rising". The Red Sox were still leading 3-2 when Lee left the game, but they went on to lose the game, 4–3. (Had they won, it would have been their first World Series championship since 1918.) Other pitchers known to have employed the eephus pitch include:
Fernando Abad (the "super changeup"),
Al McBean (the McBean ball),
Luis Tiant,
Pedro Borbón,
Yu Darvish,
Casey Fossum (called the "Fossum Flip"),
Steve Hamilton (the folly floater),
Liván Hernández,
Phil Niekro,
Orlando Hernández,
Dave LaRoche (LaLob),
Carlos Zambrano,
Vicente Padilla (dubbed the "soap bubble" by
Vin Scully),
Satchel Paige,
Pascual Pérez (the Pascual Pitch),
Kazuhito Tadano,
Bob Tewksbury,
Carlos Villanueva,
Alfredo Simón,
Clayton Kershaw,
Rich Hill,
Zack Greinke and unique wind-mill windup 1930s to 1950s pitcher
Bobo Newsom. The eephus pitch has also been employed by various position players on the rare occasion that they take the mound. Examples include
Chicago Cubs catcher
Tucker Barnhart, who threw a 39-mph eephus pitch for a strike during a one-inning appearance to close the game against the
Boston Red Sox on July 16, 2023, and threw only six pitches — all of them eephus pitches, ranging from 34 to 42 mph—for a single and three outs when he pitched the ninth inning of the Cubs' 8–0 loss to the
Atlanta Braves on August 4, 2023. In the ninth inning of an April 6, 2026 game between the
Los Angeles Dodgers and the
Toronto Blue Jays, both teams put eephus-throwing position players on the mound.
Tyler Heineman threw eephus pitches ranging from 39 to 53 mph, allowing no hits, and then in the bottom of the inning
Miguel Rojas threw a series of 55-mph eephus pitches, hitting a batter and allowing one run as the Dodgers beat the Blue Jays 14-2. Other nicknames for the eephus pitch include the balloon ball, blooper ball, gondola, parachute, rainbow pitch—distinct from the rainbow curve == In popular culture ==