Reply #13: Or as recently as the 80s (maybe) -- "Boner" from Growing Pains [View All]

[gmoney]

As a big baseball fan growing up, I recall reading about an historic screw-up known as "Merkel's Boner" where Fred Merkel made some stupid baserunning error that cost his team an important game (too lazy to wiki the details right now), but even back in the 70s, reading about that made me laugh, so whatever writer/producer approved naming a character on a network sit-com "Boner" was probably an old codger -- "Oh, that crazy kid, he's always pulling a boner."