I was raised a modest Chicago Cubs fan, but in the early ’90s I jumped ship and traded the Cubbies’ red, white and blue for the edgier black-and-white of the Chicago White Sox. The reason? Frank Thomas, aka The Big Hurt. He was an absolute powerhouse, with more than 30 homers in his first full season and back-to-back MVP awards in ’93 and ’94. For teenagers playing summer baseball, like myself at the time, every at-bat was a potential Big Hurt moment.
I fell out of baseball once I started high school, and then fell out some more during the strike, but Thomas lived on both in and out of baseball (he officially retired last year). First there was the Super NES game “Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball,” then a “Big Hurt” pinball machine. This month, the slugger’s back in the merchandizing game with his newest product: Big Hurt Beer, a 7%-ABV lager brewed by Wisconsin’s Minhas Craft Brewery.
This monster lager’s set to arrive in the Chicago market by the end of August—and no surprise, at the White Sox’s home, U.S. Cellular Field—then spread throughout Illinois in the coming months. I doubt Big Hurt Beer will have the same impact on me as the actual Big Hurt did 20 years ago, but I’ll certainly reserve a spot for it on-deck when it makes its professional debut.
So, add this one to the list of celebrity drinks, from Kid Rock’s Bad Ass Beer to Danny DeVito’s Premium Lemoncello? What’s the strangest celebrity-endorsed alcoholic drink you’ve ever seen?
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