Daniel Bard’s Filthy Whiffmaker by Carson Cistulli April 21, 2011 The pitch you see here was (a) thrown by Daniel Bard to Nick Swisher last year and (b) appears to possess changeup-type (or at least two-seam fastball-type) movement while also traveling at 99 mph. Sean Murphy, who’s preserved the above-embedded GIF at his site, refers to the sequence as “baseball porn” — and for good reason, too: there’s something equal parts filthy, captivating, and primeval about what Bard’s able to do with/to/all up on a baseball. Yesternight, Oakland starters Brett Anderson and Brandon McCarthy got to tweeting about this pitch — a conversation to which Man About the Internet @BigMike05 alerted me. Mr. Big Mike was also curious about how we might accurately characterize this pitch which, it must be said, defies superlatives. As I say, filth is the definitive quality of the offering. Watching this pitch is like watching Christina Aguilera give a lap dance to a side of beef — i.e. both disgusting and impossible to look away from. The question is, what ought we to call such a pitch? Some ideas, from the dirtiest part of Dirtville: • The Slavic Tongue Kiss — Tongue-kissing can be romantic, but not the way they do it in Eastern Europe. • The Pantless Velociraptor — A velociraptor with pants is bad enough. • The Well-Oiled Ambassador — Oiled with what, exactly? • Hepatitis K — The filthiest possible virus. • The Moist Handshake — Ick. Not so nice to meet you, actually.