Batter Up



""Beat on the brat, beat on the brat, beat on the brat with a baseball bat, oh yeah!""

- The Ramones

Baseball bats are popular weapons. They're commonly considered as such in Real Life in any country where baseball isn't that big. Hell, it's sort of like that even in the ones where baseball is a big deal. Brits or Aussies could substitute a cricket bat -- artfully described on the Cricket Rules page as "flat on one side, making it ideal for hitting people who owe you money without leaving a bruise. The flatness also gives it edges, for when you do want to leave a bruise".

Overlaps with instances of Improbable Weapon User, Weapon of Choice and Improvised Weapon. Subtrope of I Know Madden Kombat.

Compare Wooden Katanas Are Even Better. Also compare Carry a Big Stick for big sticks specifically designed as weapons.

Telephone Polearm is a subtrope for very large instances instances of this.

Not to be confused with the aggressive use of little nocturnal flying mammals, or the use of a pancake mixture as a weapon. Also not to be confused with Home Run Hitter, although they do occasionally overlap.

Anime & Manga
"Kaname: I'LL SHOW YOU A BULLSEYE!!! (knocks him across the beach with one blow) Ren: That was more... Shinji: ...powerful than usual."
 * Both Keiichi and Satoshi in Higurashi no Naku Koro ni.
 * Also Rena in her backstory,
 * Reborn has a weapon called Yamamoto's Bat that combines this with Katanas Are Just Better: a baseball bat that, when swung at 300 MPH, turns into a sword.
 * A baseball bat is the preferred weapon of Kuroki from Eyeshield 21, even though he's on the football team.
 * Shonen Bat/Lil' Slugger in Paranoia Agent, named after his signature weapon.
 * Botan in Yu Yu Hakusho uses a metal baseball bat as a weapon in one arc.
 * Kuwabara sometimes used his Reiken like a baseball bat, before he learned what else he could do with it. He was wearing a baseball jersey in the manga when he first manifested it.
 * Full Metal Panic? Fumoffu. Kaname clobbers Sousuke with one during the Beach Episode for shooting a melon with a shotgun, spraying her with it's juices and daring to say "Bullseye". All while blindfolded.


 * In Gunbuster, the titular mecha wields a massive baseball bat. Considering that said mecha is one of the largest in fiction, you can imagine just how big the bat is.
 * Used to its full Freudian extent in FLCL. Constantly.
 * Mr. 9 and Mr. 4 of One Piece use bats, a pun off their names; there are nine people up to bat, and the fourth batter is considerably the best so that they can score a grand slam.
 * And of course the baseball special had nearly everyone using bats as unique weapons.
 * You're Under Arrest has the Large Ham crazy baseball-themed vigilante, Strikeman, who calls his archnemesis "Home Run Girl" after her usual way of beating him.
 * Sentou Oumi from Fight Ippatsu! Juuden-chan!!. He hits Plug and Arresta with his baseball bat in reaction to their sudden appearances before him. Plug doesn't react well to the assaults. Arresta, however, gets an orgasm from the impact of the bat. But only when it's Sentou wielding it.
 * Kai from Tokyo Tribe 2 uses a baseball bat as his main weapon.
 * Mob boss Momochiki Minoi in Mezzo Forte quite appropriately uses a bat to take out his frustrations on the underperforming pitcher of his baseball team.
 * Batting Female Doctor Saori is a rare case where her batting heals people.
 * In Baccano!, Isaac and Miria commit a robbery using baseball bats as weapons. They steal money from a major crime family while dressed as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb. Yeah, they can be like that.
 * Tooru of A Channel will brandish a metal baseball bat at any boy who gets too close to her Run-Chan.
 * Takashi from Highschool of the Dead fights them with a baseball bat until he graduates to a shotgun.
 * In Natsume Yuujinchou, occasional flashbacks show that Takashi's grandmother, Natsume Reiko, used a baseball bat covered in Ofuda as her principal weapon. And considering the number of spirits, demons and minor gods she defeated and enslaved, she must've been quite the slugger with it...

Comics

 * In the Elseworlds story 'Scar of the Bat', Eliot Ness adopts the Batman identity to take on Al Capone, wielding a baseball bat as his primary weapon.
 * In The DCU, mentally unbalanced vigilante Nite-Wing (completely different person from Nightwing, but he's pretty much only appeared in Nightwing's series) uses a baseball bat and a golf club to strike fear into the hearts of evildoers. He also does it by beating people to death.
 * Also, mentally unbalanced Bruce Wayne when he became the Batman of Zurr-En-Arr (just go with it) wore a garish purple costume and went around beating criminals up with a baseball bat.
 * In the comics series Mage, Kevin Matchstick is a reincarnation of King Arthur, and his version of Excalibur is a magical bat. Other items of power are reborn in this way; one hero, with the power of Joseph from the bible, has his trumpet replaced by a kazoo.
 * In Hack Slash Cassie Hack's main weapon is a baseball bat with "KISS IT" carved into it.
 * British comics Hotspur and Wizard featured a comic strip/prose story called "The Wolf of Kabul", introduced in 1922. The title character's manservant's Weapon of Choice was a cricket bat called "Clicky-ba". See the character's entry on this page.
 * Peter hints at wanting to beat Roger up with golf clubs when he has to golf with his dad in a torrental rainstorm in an arc of FoxTrot. Similarly, Andy Fox has hinted at wanting to beat Roger up with buying an expensive golf club when she finds out in another arc. In a sunday strip, she even tried to play Golf while envisioning Roger's face on the ball out of irritation at having to go golfing, to which she hit it extremely hard, which Roger, oblivious to his wife's anger, states "Easy, dear. You want to hit the ball, not kill it."
 * The Punisher 2099's signature weapon was the Power Bat, a club whose hardness he could actually adjust.

Film
"Graham: Swing away Merrill. Merrill... swing away."
 * A self-telescoping baseball bat is apparently the preferred weapon of Griff Tannen from Back to The Future II. He even says the trope name before attacking Marty with it.
 * In the same movie, Marty comes back to 1985 and sneaks into his own house through an open window -- only to discover that reality has changed and somebody else lives there now. Since the room he broke into happened to be a little girl's bedroom, the father quickly appears and chases him out with a baseball bat.
 * Wanna-be gangsta Raji Lowenthal uses a red baseball bat in Be Cool to get even with another character who insulted his manner of speech... only after said character was already incapacitated, of course.
 * In Bill and Teds Excellent Adventure, Genghis Khan raids a sporting goods store for weapons and armor. He selects an aluminum baseball bat as his weapon and gives it a few flourishes.
 * Realistically played in Butterfly Effect when . Hitting someone in the head with one doesn't give them a black eye, it's extremely liable to kill them.
 * The sad, sad fate of  in Casino.
 * A bat is kept in the store for security in Cornered, so it's of course used on the killer, but just once.
 * Devon's Ghost: Legend of the Bloody Boy has a spectral baseball player with a circular saw embedded in his bat.
 * In Escape from New York, Snake gets entered into some Blood Sport and pitted against a huge guy. First they fight with baseball bats, then with baseball bats with huge nails.
 * 50 First Dates.
 * In Inglourious Basterds, Donny Donowitz, known to Nazis as The Bear Jew, has a notorious reputation for his execution of Nazis with a baseball bat. Basically an even more sociopathic Scout. He even says "batter up".
 * In Innocent Blood, the cop uses a bat on the vampire gangster's thug, and breaks the bat on him.
 * In The Last Detail, a bartender tells the protagonists he's gonna pull out the gun he has under the bar if they don't settle down, and Jack Nicholson says he knows for a fact all the bartender has under there is a baseball bat, because he saw him pull it out one night and bash some kid over the head with it.
 * In the horror film Mikey the Enfante Terrible title character savagely bashes his first foster father's brains in with a metal baseball bat.
 * In the Danish crime film Pusher, Frank uses a baseball bat to beat down his sidekick Tonny after some police claim that Tonny ratted him out.
 * In Shaun of the Dead, Shaun uses a cricket bat as a weapon and poses with it on the film's poster.
 * Hellgate:London has a Shout-Out to the film with a usable cricket bat called Shaun's Trusty Sidekick.
 * The climax of Signs involves Joaquin Phoenix's character clubbing an alien half to death with a baseball bat, though that isn't what kills it.

"Raphael (after blocking one of Casey's swings and examining the bat): A Jose Canseco bat? Tell me...you didn't pay money for this."
 * In Silver Bullet Reverend Lester kills Sheriff Haller while transforming into a werewolf by bashing his skull with with a baseball bat he had taken from one of his victims.
 * In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Casey Jones uses all manner of sport clubs as his Weapon of Choice.
 * He uses two baseball bats, apparently autographed ones:

"Raphael: Cricket? Nobody understands cricket! You gotta know what a crumpet is to understand cricket! Casey: I'll teach you. (launches Raph into the air and into a trash can with one solid WHACK!) See? Six runs."
 * As well as a cricket bat:


 * In This Is Spinal Tap, the band's manager keeps a cricket bat with him and extols its uses during management disputes. A short montage shows him wrecking things with his trusty bat.
 * Al Capone in The Untouchables famously used a baseball bat to savagely murder one of his subordinates at a dinner meeting. This was Truth in Television.
 * Parodied on The Simpsons when Mr. Burns tries to bludgeon a holdout on the Board of Regents at Springfield U. He can barely lift the bat, taps the guy so softly he's just confused by it, and then passes out from exhaustion.
 * Vampires Suck: Edward does this to Jack, parodying both the baseball scene and the final fight of Twilight. Vampires may be able to jump inhuman distances, but once they're airborne, they're still subject to the laws of projectile physics!
 * Sheriff Buford Pusser in the Walking Tall series.
 * The Baseball Furies gang in the movie The Warriors is baseball themed, and all use baseball bats as their weapons. They don't stop the Warriors Crowning Moment of Awesome, but our heroes make good use of them later.
 * Tallahassee uses a baseball bat to kill a few zombies in Zombieland.
 * In ''Problem Child", Junior's dad gives him the tip of "holding onto the bat" after two strikes. After hitting the ball, he holds onto the bat while making his way to the bases and uses it to beat up anyone in his way.

Humor
"... Instead, I pray to Joe Pesci. Why? Two reasons. First, I think he's a good actor, and that counts for something. Second, Joe Pesci looks like the kind of guy who can get things done. For years I asked God to do something about my nosy neighbor with the barking dog. Joe Pesci straightened that cocksucker out with one visit. Amazing what one can accomplish with a simple wooden baseball bat..."
 * George Carlin claimed in one stand-up bit that he prayed to Joe Pesci rather than God in part because of this trope.

"Last year, the sports shops around Russia had sold three million baseball bats, four baseball gloves, and one baseball."
 * He also made a joke in one of his books saying that the bat really is the perfect murder weapon: legal, able to buy one in any sporting store, and hey, it's the national pastime!
 * Russian Humour:

Literature

 * British pulp hero Bill Samson a.k.a "the Wolf of Kabul" had a hulking native sidekick named Chung who wielded a cricket he called "clicky-ba" with which he used to kill foes.
 * The Krikkit Robots from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy have a cricket motif (in fact the other way around - cricket is built around a deeply ingrained Genetic Memory of the robots). As well as being melee weapons, their "bats" double up as ray guns and a launching mechanism for bright red incendiary grenades.
 * In Trainspotting, Sick Boy uses a baseball bat as a weapon. Renton wonders how many baseball bats are purchased in Scotland with the honest intention of playing baseball.
 * In Gil's All-Fright Diner, the ghost Cathy has to fight another ghost. Since they can't touch any physical objects, she has to create a weapon from her own memories, and comes up with... a baseball bat.
 * This is an occasional weapon in The Hardy Boys through process of elimination. Thou Shalt Not Kill, so slashing and piercing weapons are out, and since they usually avoid combat they don't carry standard weapons, but a baseball bat can be scavenged to use as an Improvised Weapon for a Tap on the Head.
 * The Nights Dawn Trilogy. When one of the Possessed claims to be legendary gangster Al Capone, he grows a blood-stained baseball bat from his hand to prove it. Which he later puts to use beating the non-possessed into submission.
 * Fraternity of the Stone by David Morrell. The assassin protagonist while a youth knocks out the teeth of a school bully with one, as he regards him as no different from the terrorists that killed his parents. Although the headmaster is sympathetic, he naturally thinks this is overkill and expels him.
 * Baseball bats appear several times as weapons against the zombies in World War Z. One character finds a dropped bat that's been bent totally useless as a result.
 * Subverted to comedic effect in the Honor Harrington novel Flag in Exile when the main character, unfamiliar with baseball, confuses baseball bats for clubs, but is actually looking at people gathering for a Sunday afternoon pickup game in the local park.
 * In Stationery Voyagers, Maria DiNazalenth tries a 2x4 variation of this against Gabon, before he explains who he is. It doesn't work.
 * The killer in John Dickson Carr's  used a cricket bat.

Live Action TV
"Rick: Oh, Vyvyan, what repartee! Sticks and stones may brrreak my bones - Vyvyan: That is the first sensible thing you have said all day! *CRACK*"
 * In the Doctor Who serial Remembrance of the Daleks, the Doctor's sidekick Ace fights a Dalek armed only with a baseball bat. Admittedly, it's a baseball bat that's been turned into an energy mace after being exposed to a long-lost alien superweapon... Sophie Aldred, who played Ace, considers the fact that she is the only person in the entire series to beat a Dalek to a pulp with a baseball bat as a personal Crowning Moment of Awesome, and this led to the creation of the trope page in the first place.
 * "WHO YOU CALLIN' SMALL?!"
 * In the 2010 episode "The Eleventh Hour", attacks  using a cricket bat.
 * CSI: NY:
 * In one episode, a guy who tried to fake his death to collect on the insurance by using Blowfish poison to make him appear dead was betrayed by his spouse and buried alive. He managed to break out, so the spouse's lover killed him with a cricket bat (but not before he managed to inject both of them with the poison).
 * In the episode "Tanglewood", the Tanglewood Boys kill a wannabe with an autographed baseball bat taken from a sports bar. The fragment of signature on the splinter left in the body provides the CSI investigators with a vital clue.
 * In one episode of Cold Case, the victim was a baseball player
 * Vyvyan in The Young Ones sometimes used a cricket bat as weapon; mostly against his fellow housemates.

"Rick: What the ruddy heck is going on?! Vyvyan: SHUT UP! *SMACK* Rick: Hah! Missed both my legs!"
 * Also:

"Leo McGarry: You're going to meet him right now. It's going to be fine... Ainsley Hayes: It's not going to be fine. He's gonna yell, and scream, I've seen him on TV... Leo McGarry: Well, that's TV. He's making a full-throated defense of the President. That's what we do. Believe me, in real life, when the cameras are off... [Lionel Tribbey storms into Leo's office, brandishing a cricket bat] Lionel Tribbey: LEO! I will KILL people today, Leo! I will kill people with this cricket bat, which was given to me by Her Royal Majesty Elizabeth Windsor, and then I WILL KILL THEM AGAIN WITH MY OWN HANDS!"
 * Former WCW and current TNA wrestler Sting's foreign object of choice is a black baseball bat.
 * Mick Foley also tends to use a baseball bat, nicknamed "Barbie". That's because it's wrapped in barbed wire.
 * Deadliest Warrior compared the baseball bat as a weapon to nunchucks in the "Mafia vs Yakuza" episode. The judges determined that nunchucks were faster and flashier, but the baseball bat delivered a heavier and more lethal blow, by which we mean it shattered a pig's spine in one hit.
 * Anya wields one in the Season 5 finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, though she chokes up on the bat so much that she's holding it by the middle, which wouldn't give her much of a swing.
 * Giles wields a flaming baseball bat when he attacks Angelus.
 * This was also Angel's solution to stop Faith raping\killing Xander.
 * In the Angel spin-off, Gunn uses a baseball bat whose head has been sharpened into a stake. Ironically the same weapon is used in a Mad TV spoof Buffy the Umpire Slayer.
 * Bodie and "The Pit" crew beat up some rival drug dealers with bats on The Wire. It's the weapon of choice when they don't want to bring down police attention.
 * Parodied in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia when the gang locks a Mexican family in a room filled with stereotypical American culture. Mac casually swings a baseball bat around them, causing them to think he's threatening them.
 * Memorably used (probably half-jokingly, but we'll never know) as a threat by none other than the White House Counsel on The West Wing, in a Crowning Moment of Funny:

"Brody: *holds up bat* Can I borrow this? Kramer: Sure. Do you need a glove? Brody: *smiles* No."
 * In Skins,
 * On an episode of Seinfeld one of Kramer's criminal buddies asked if he could borrow a baseball bat.

"Erin: What's that for? Chris: In case he has a gun. Erin: That shoots BASEBALLS?"
 * Al Bundy liked to keep a baseball bat near the door in case of undesirables... such as Jehovah's Witnesses.
 * In the Tear Jerker last episode of the first season of Queer as Folk, Justin is hit over the head with a baseball bat by his homophobic classmate, and is very nearly killed.
 * In one episode of Titus Chris grabbed a bat he kept under his couch when he arrived at his home one day and heard an intruder in his kitchen. His girlfriend did not think it was a good idea.


 * Penny in The Big Bang Theory expressed shock about the burglary at Leonard's apartment, especially due to her working the late shift and thus would have witnessed it if she didn't have it. Leonard tells her not to be scared, before she reveals that she's not scared, and states that she would have "gone 'Nebraska' on their asses." while stroking an aluminum baseball bat. When Sheldon knocks at the apartment door, Leonard then requests for Penny to hand him the bat (implying that he wanted to smack Sheldon with it).

Music
"''"We had our words... a common spat. So I kissed him upside the cranium
 * The Ramones' "Beat on the Brat", quoted up top.
 * "My Name Is Mud", Primus;

With an aluminum baseball bat."''"

"''"A soldier on the streets, somewhere in L.A. Preparing this night for the attack Swinging chains and switchblade knives Feel the nails in my baseball bat!"''"
 * "Licensed to Kill" by Jag Panzer:

"Peanut butter jelly Peanut butter jelly Peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat!"
 * "Peanut Butter Jelly Time"

Myth & Religion

 * In Japanese Mythology, this is one defining trait of Oni. They are commonly depicted as being huge, freakishly strong, and wielding a huge iron bat. Such a weapon in the hands of such a creature is seen as a little excessive, given that oni are usually depicted as being strong enough to flatten mountains.
 * This is so iconic that it has led to the Japanese idiom "oni ni kanabo" ("an oni with his iron bat") - roughly, "No Kill Like Overkill".

Tabletop Games

 * The Bat Mobile in the Card Game Super Munchkin, and the Bat Bat in Munchkin Bites.
 * The baseball bat is often cited in 'modern' role-playing games (GURPS, Spycraft, etc). Generally, it's considered a club. Which, you know, it is.
 * A few Dungeons and Dragons Splatbooks have also mentioned that a "worked" club is essentially a wooden baseball bat, and d20 Modern gives them the same combat stats.
 * In the French roleplaying game Magna Veritas, the bat is archangel Daniel's weapon of choice. So much that his purge of the rotten eggs in his angelic troops was called the Night of the Long Bats.
 * The Yu-Gi-Oh Card Game has Ultimate Baseball Kid, who uses a baseball bat with spikes as a weapon.

Video Games
"Frankie: Pleased to meet ya. I'm Frankie "the Bat" Niagara. Max: Niagara... as in you cry a lot? Max's narration: He had a baseball bat and I was tied to a chair. Pissing him off was the smart thing to do."
 * Makes things easier sometimes in Bully.
 * The Home-run bat in Super Smash Bros, which can become a One Hit KO item when charged up.
 * Ness from Earthbound wields one, possibly augmented by his psychic abilities. In EarthBound Zero, Ninten also wields a bat, and Lucas' ultimate weapon in Mother 3 is the Real Bat. He has also a Fake Bat.
 * One of Cloud's weapons in Final Fantasy VII is a Nail Bat.
 * Max Payne features a baseball bat as an Emergency Weapon, which replaces your initial pipe. In the first game, Max gets it from Frankie "The Bat" Niagara. The violent comic strip character Captain Baseball Bat Boy is also a running theme throughout the first two games.
 * The conversation Max has with him pretty much says it all:

"Majima: This is the part where you're SUPPOSED TO LAUGH! [WHACK!]"
 * Persona:
 * In Persona 3, the Joke Weapon of the 2-handed sword class is a Nail Bat. Junpei, the party's BFS wielder, attacks with weapons of this class as though they were baseball bats, complete with yelling "Home Run!" when he scores a Critical Hit. And he's particularly ecstatic if you do equip him with the bat.
 * Persona 4 lets the protagonist equip one as well. It only hits 30% of the time (though when you think about it, that's a pretty good batting average), but has a much higher than normal rate of critical hits.
 * Lots of games set in an urban environment feature the baseball bat as a weapon - ranging from Manhunt to Dead Rising.
 * Frank West carries a bat into Tatsunokovs Capcom, both as a special move and a super move. The trope name is even one of his sound bites. Bats have sort of become an Iconic Item for Frank. In Dead Rising 2: Case West, an AI controlled Frank has an infinite supply of bats as weapons.
 * In the Fallout series:
 * Fallout 2 has the "Louisville Sluggerm" a baseball bat obtainable from Mrs. Wright in New Reno if you help her sabotage the Wrights' stills.
 * A baseball bat is the first melee weapon you get in Fallout 3.
 * The "Slugger" is a secret weapon found in Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, and one of the most powerful in the game.
 * New Vegas also has the baseball bat, though its unique VATS attack is called the Grand Slam. Its also one of those early game ineffectual melee weapons you'll want to dump for something better as soon as possible.
 * A baseball bat is Kratos/Zelos' Joke Weapon in Tales of Symphonia.
 * The storm bat in S4 League
 * Baseball bat is a Lethal Joke Item in Jets N Guns - it only works at point blank range, but deals enormous damage.
 * In the Heist multiplayer mode of Conkers Bad Fur Day, all the players have bats as a default weapon. The Xbox remake gives Conker a bat in the story mode when he finds out his frying pan isn't as effective as it was in the original.
 * Since City of Heroes added customizable weapons, a Tanker can take the War Mace powerset but alter it to look like a baseball bat. This troper has already seen two characters modeled after the Scout.
 * Invention allows all players to create a limited-use baseball bat power. Presumably after hitting one too many characters who are Made of Iron it just breaks.
 * Bad Girl from No More Heroes. Hurt her enough and she lights it on fire.
 * It's worth noting that most of the other assassins in No More Heroes use ridiculously complex gadgets and weapons (Bad Girl's predecessor attacks you with a Wave Motion Gun disguised as a shopping cart). Bad Girl is able to rise above all but one of them with nothing but a wooden bat and a serious case of the deep-down crazies. And projectile gimps.
 * The Scout from Team Fortress 2 wields one and has an entire Baseball motif. His appearance, taunts, and Achievements all reference it.
 * One of the weapons in the arsenal of Worms. Great way to smack someone into the ocean, complete with corny sound effects (usually the very stereotypical Charge) and caption.
 * Shoma in Rival Schools. He's a baseball player so this is a given, but the bat he carries around is longer than he is tall.
 * So, it's a Nobatchi then?
 * One of Gene's Roulettes in God Hand is Home Run God, where he forms ki into a bat and sends the enemy flying into the distance.
 * We mustn't forget the magical Excalibat from Rise of the Triad. This enchanted baseball bat can knock the enemies flying, sometimes gibbing them in the process, and if you hold down the fire button for a while, it unleashes a wave of deadly baseballs
 * Let's just say that Grand Theft Auto eats, breathes, and sleeps with this trope.
 * In Mafia one of the earliest missions requires you to whack some dudes senseless with a baseball bat from behind.
 * Goro Majima, the Psycho for Hire rival to Kazuma Kiryu from the first Yakuza game, in a Joker-like moment (Majima is voiced in the English version by Mark Hamill) takes a baseball bat to one of his underlings before Kazuma's first battle with him for not laughing after Majima gets hit in the side of the head with a baseball at the batting cage. He's more of a Knife Nut than a true bat aficionado though.


 * Used in the sequel to The Suffering, but subverted in that it's exactly as useless as you'd think compared to an M-60. (As one walkthrough remarked, "Put down the crack pipe.")
 * The best weapon in Mitadake High is the wooden bat, especially when nails are applied, due to how the game calculates damage and unconsciousness.
 * Bangai-O uses a giant robot-scale baseball bat to deflect enemy shots and send enemies flying.
 * In The Godfather: The Game, a baseball bat of the wooden sort is your first melee weapon.
 * Mike Jones is a star pitcher from Seattle, so he's more than familiar with a baseball bat which, in the game, is a really strong, short-ranged attack.
 * Left 4 Dead 2 has both a baseball bat and a cricket bat. In the case of the latter this is rather odd, considering the setting is the Deep South of the USA.
 * They belong to the local school principals, perhaps?
 * In Blinx 2 one of the weapons that can be obtained is a baseball bat called the Grand Slam. It is a one-use weapon that is guaranteed to take out an opponent. After using it, you have to find a new one, because it breaks in the process. But it can make all the difference. Plus, making a really annoying guard A Twinkle in the Sky is priceless.
 * Useful for conserving ammo while zombie hunting in Time Splitters: Future Perfect.
 * Street Fighter EX's Cracker Jack is as good with a baseball bat as he is with his fists.
 * Irisu Syndrome has wield a rather vicious nailbat.
 * MadWorld has the spike bat, a baseball bat with at least a dozen large roofing nails stuck in it.
 * The Batter from OFF uses a baseball bat and baseball inspired moves for killing spectres.
 * It's the weapon Mark uses in Monster Party.
 * In Marvel Vs. Capcom 3, Deadpool's level 3 involves using the hyper combo meter as a baseball bat.
 * One of the weapons in Odium. About as much power as a crowbar, and weaker than an axe.
 * Appear quite frequently in Streets of Rage and its sequels. Some of the basic mooks wield them, although you can pick them up to return the favour!
 * You'd be hard-pressed to find any official artwork of Fuka without her trademarked baseball bat. Of course, in-game it's treated the same weapon-wise as an axe.
 * Ninja Baseball Bat Man. It's right there in the title!
 * The bat is the second weakest melee weapon in Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines. Lots of thugs in Santa Monica and downtown LA use them.
 * One weapon in River City Ransom, which tends to use improvised weapons such as this and chains, in addition to more traditional weapons like brass knuckles.
 * Batman: Arkham Asylum and 'Batman: Arkham City'' had various enemies using bats as clubs to whack Batman with. In the latter game, Harley Quinn also used a bat to whack Batman unconscious after Joker ambushed him, even yelling "Batter Up!" before doing so.
 * Bats are an uncommon weapon in The Warriors and like in the movie, bats are always carried by the Baseball Furies gang. Their gang leader wields three bats tied together and it HURTS. Too bad you can't get that weapon anywhere else.
 * In Attack of the Mutant Penguins, Rodney can obtain a baseball bat. He doesn't use it to play baseball.
 * In Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning, this is how the Fateless One finishes off gnomes in Reckoning mode.
 * In Warriors Orochi 3, the Bat is one of the Lethal Joke Items that can be used by sword-users.
 * In RHDE, a ball bat is the only weapon that a unit can carry.

Webcomics

 * In Better Days, Fisk stops his mother's rape by braining her attacker with a bat.
 * Steve from Life and Death uses a cricket bat as his favored weapon.
 * Sidekick Girl, from the comic of the same name, uses a baseball bat as her primary weapon.
 * Shelly of Wapsi Square seems to take a baseball bat with her to answer the door late at night.
 * Goblin Hollow: When she realizes that her two (girl) goblins are the first girls the boy goblins have ever met -- she drags along a bat. Just in case.
 * In Men in Hats, when Aram is pretending to be a baseball star, he carries around "Mr. Breakface" in case people question his pretense.
 * Karate Bears understand the usefulness of a baseball bat
 * Paranatural: Main character Maxwell Puckett's "tool" is a bat, which he uses to fight supernatural creatures.

Web Original

 * At Whateley Academy in the Whateley Universe, Lancer is a PK 'superboy' type with a psychokinetic force field that gives him his strength and Nigh Invulnerability. But he's found out he can extend his forcefield to any short object (less than a meter) that he's holding. He's turned his baseball bat into a (nearly) indestructible offensive weapon.
 * Since his field is sharp where it is psychologically appropriate the paper swords are more impressive.
 * In the Kate Modern episode "Batwoman" Lauren chases off two Hymn of Oners with a cricket bat.
 * A cricket bat is occasionally used as a weapon by Landshark of AH Dot Com the Series.
 * At least one baseball bat is assigned in each season of Survival of the Fittest, whether on its own or with additions such as a nail being imbedded into it. Version One's Adam Dodd used one to make his first kill during an Unstoppable Rage on someone who attacked his True Companions, a taste of things to come for him.
 * Everyman HYBRID: Evan finds a baseball bat lying around in "Ashen Waste". Then the Slender Man shows up and Evan tries to attack him with it.
 * Yanki J's method of fighting during the second invasion of Molossia in Kickassia.
 * Related to the above example, this is how Todd in the Shadows and Paw Dugan get rid of in Suburban Knights.
 * The League of STEAM's zombie hunter, Katherine Blackmoore, uses a cricket bat as her signature weapon (perhaps a shout-out to Shaun of the Dead).

Western Animation

 * Considering the cartoon Pro Stars has Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, and Bo Jackson fighting crime, it was inevitable that they'd go into battle throwing basketballs, swinging a hockey stick, and bashing heads in attacks out of the air with a baseball bat.
 * Casey Jones's signature weapon is a baseball bat, but he does use other sports-related blunt instruments.
 * Norm Abram does this in the final episode of Freakazoid. Freakazoid was the bat.
 * In Danny Phantom one of the Fenton ghost hunting weapons is one called the Fenton Anti-creep stick. It's a bat. With the word "Fenton" on it.
 * In the Animaniacs episode "Draculee, Dracula" Wakko hits Dracula over the head with a baseball bat, the censors didn't want children to imitate this scene so the animators put a smiley face and bat wings on it.
 * The Looney Tunes short "Transylvania 6-5000" while trying to avoid being hit by Bugs Bunny again, Count Bloodcount puts on a pair of glasses and says "You wouldn't hit a bat with glasses would you?" in response Bugs turns himself into a baseball bat and hits him.
 * In Beavis and Butthead pilot episode "Frog Baseball" Butthead bashes Beavis over the head with one knocking out most of his teeth and later beats a frog to death with it.
 * "Die Fly, Die" had Butthead smashing a baseball bat over Beavis's back while trying to kill a fly.
 * The Family Guy episode "Road To The North Pole" while posing as Santa Claus Brian makes too much noise while raiding a family's kitchen so the father decides to call the police to prevent this from happening Stewie viciously beats him to death with a baseball bat, he then uses it to knock out his wife and daughter.
 * On an episode of Jem, boyfriend Rio actually says this just before dispatching of the thugs who have attacked Jerrica.
 * In the Batman: The Animated Series episode, "Christmas with the Joker", Batman uses a baseball bat to swat away several RC airplanes attacking him.
 * Robin lampshades it, quipping, "They don't call you BATman for nothing!"

Real Life

 * Baseball and hockey both take this very seriously.
 * Ty Cobb, one of the meanest players in professional baseball history, never attacked anyone with a bat -- but he regularly used the metal cleats on the bottoms of his shoes as weapons.
 * …to the point that he would actually sharpen the spikes on his cleats, the better to bloody the legs of whatever poor middle infielder tried to tag him out when stealing second base.
 * Its common for families in rougher areas to keep a baseball bat by the front door for convenient dispatching of undesirables.
 * Hell, there are some self-defense schools that actually teach the use of baseball bats as weapons in their own right due to their cheap materials and easy availability.
 * It's also one of the rare weapons that you can legally carry around with Plausible Deniability of using for hitting, you know... baseballs.
 * In Russia (where baseball notably failed to get any semblance of popularity) bats outsell all other baseball paraphernalia combined by orders of magnitude. In the 90s it was considered a common "car accessory" on par with a crowbar or a tire wrench.
 * Same for Poland, to the point that 'replicas of baseball bats' are considered a weapon under the Firearms and Ammunition Act. No other ordinary tool, including knives of any kind are not weapons and are completely unregulated.

"WHACK!"