Photo-supported grip cue
The fingers sit close together with more hand surface on the ball, matching the football-change or palmball family cue.
Offspeed
Niche
Palmball
aka palm ball · football change · football changeup
An old-school slow ball. You bury the ball deep in your palm, almost like palming a football, and squeeze. In a live grip photo, four fingers together on the ball is the giveaway. The whole hand drains the speed while the arm still looks like a fastball, so it arrives soft and late with a little sink.
Grip Evidence
The photo can say this much
This is the visual grip-reference layer for Football change (palmball). It names visible placement and Austin's own feel notes, then stops before making measured claims.
TopFour fingers laid together across the top of the ball, seated deep toward the palm. The football-change smother.
Original · Austin H. · 2026
SideFrom the side, the ball buried deep in the hand under all four fingers.
Original · Austin H. · 2026Pitcher's own words
My football change. The giveaway is the hand together, all four fingers touching the ball. The more fingers you put on it, the more it slows down coming out — instead of getting slingshotted off the fingertips and snapped with the wrist, the whole hand drags the speed off it while the arm still looks like a fastball.
I only threw this much for about one summer, here and there. It sat between my curve and my three-finger change: the same release slot as the 12-6 — palm pointed back toward me instead of out at the batter — but a break in between the two.
Sourced public record
The existing official and cited claims stay in the page below with their original confidence labels. This photo does not upgrade or replace those sources.
Grip photo only; does not prove tracked speed, spin, shape, command, injury risk, or outcome.
See every grip in the Grip Library.
The grip
Cradle the ball deep in the palm, wrapping the fingers around it in a C-shape (much like palming a football) with the closed end of the horseshoe seam against the palm. Squeezing the ball with the whole hand is what kills the speed; the deeper and tighter the grip, the slower the pitch.
What it does
Thrown with identical fastball arm action so it mimics a fastball out of the hand, but the deep palm pressure strips speed through hand pressure rather than spin, arriving noticeably soft with a late, gentle sink. The deception comes from the matching arm action, not the movement.
What it really is
Old-timers' name for what some coaches and players today call a 'football change' or 'football changeup,' because the deep C-shaped grip resembles palming a football. The 'football change' label is informal coaching/community vocabulary rather than an officially tracked pitch name.
The palmball=football-change equivalence appears in coaching forums and instructional blogs but is not corroborated by any reachable authoritative source (the most direct forum statement returned HTTP 403 and could not be cited); recorded as community naming, not verified taxonomy. The palmball pitch itself and Hoffman's use of it are well-sourced via Wikipedia and efastball.
Who throws itTrevor Hoffman, whose palmball-grip changeup is the modern gold standard and his career out pitch; earlier practitioners include Roy Halladay.
Basic file
This pitch has a sourced one-line grip and movement and an honest explanation — not yet a filed specimen with authored grip geometry and a full craft chapter. A fuller breakdown is coming. Sourced, not corrected.