Popular Culture
- In the 1989 film Major League it was announced of fictional New York Yankees pitcher Duke Simpson: "The Duke led the American League this year in saves, ERA, and hit batsmen. This guy once threw at his own kid at a father-son game."
- Satirical newspaper The Onion ran a story entitled "Craig Biggio Blames Media Pressure For Stalling At 285 Hit-By-Pitches" as Biggio closed in on the record of 287 hit-by-pitches.
- In The Simpsons episode "Homer at the Bat", Homer Simpson is hit in the head by a pitch while playing for the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant softball team, rendering him unconscious, but forcing in the winning run.
- In Cheers, the slow-witted bartender known as "Coach" in one episode claimed to hold a minor league record for being hit by pitches. Being hit was a skill he cultivated, saying it was just as good as a hit.
- In Futurama, the future equivalent of baseball (blernsball) has Leela as the first female pitcher. She ends up hitting every batter at the plate (or "beaning" them) and goes down as the worst pitcher in history.
- In both versions of the movie Bad News Bears, coach Buttermaker makes use of several unorthodox tactics during the season final. One of them is instructing one of his players (Rudi Stein in the 1976 original and Daragabrigadien in the remake) to get hit on purpose in order to load the bases, knowing he has a very good batter coming up next (Engelberg and Leak, respectively).
- In Major, the protagonist's father, Shigeharu Honda, is hit in the head by a pitch during a major league match. Although he manages to revive and finish the game, he dies next morning from internal bleeding in the skull, leaving his son an orphan.
Read more about this topic: Hit By Pitch
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Like other secret lovers, many speak mockingly about popular culture to conceal their passion for it.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)
“The higher, the more exalted the society, the greater is its culture and refinement, and the less does gossip prevail. People in such circles find too much of interest in the world of art and literature and science to discuss, without gloating over the shortcomings of their neighbors.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)