It’s been just under a century since The Young Pitcher hit bookshelves. The novel, written by Penn alum and then-best selling author Zane Grey, was one of the most popular novels of its day.

The highly autobiographical novel tells the story of a young man who wins his way to recognition in college thanks to his pitching skills. In one section, the young man is running from upperclassmen:

The bronze-haired soph was half-way up the steps. His followers, 12 or more, were climbing after him. Then a line of others stretched all the way to College Hall

Hmm, sound familiar?

That’s because The Young Pitcher takes place at Wayne College, a thinly vieled University of Pennsylvania. To this day, it is still “undoubtedly the best-selling novel ever set on the Penn campus, thinly disguised though it was,” according to the Pennsylvania Gazette.

But the novel was just one of the first high-profile references to Penn in pop culture. Since 1911, and especially in recent years, the number of references to Penn in pop culture has skyrocketed.

The Young Pitcher may be most famous novel set at Penn, but the best-selling Lovely Bones (2002) didn’t make any attempts to hide Penn’s real name. The novel, sadly, describes a young woman who is brutally raped and murdered, but then watches her friends and relatives go on with their lives.

Her boyfriend’s situation sounds pretty familiar:

By the time he packed his bags for Penn, he had committed so many words and their definitions to memory that I grew worried. … When he unpacked inside Hill House dormitory, my picture fell on the floor beside his bed.

Yet, it’s not just books. Penn’s also had its share of television and movie references. Penn surely has a friend in M. Night Shyamalan, who has mentioned Penn or made it a setting for a number of his films. Unbreakable was clearly set at Penn and West Philly, and Franklin Field is clearly the location for the movie’s football scene. Bruce Willis plays a security guard at “the university,” but he wears a FSU cap.

Shyamalan’s The Village was even more explicit:

He’s even an American History professor (my major)! I probably would have been in his class, you know, if it were real life and not a movie. Rumor is M. Night was also a huge fan of the floor-to-ceiling urinals in Franklin Field. And more recently, Penn was also named a couple times in the final season of The West Wing.

In one scene, Democratic presidential candidate Matthew Santos gives a speech at college, with “University of Pennsylvania” shown as the setting. And in another:

(If the play button doesn’t appear, click on the video and hit the space bar)

It seems Penn is doing pretty well getting its name out there. I couldn’t track a DVD down, but It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia throws out Penn at least every couple episodes (see Dennis and Dee talking about taking psych at Penn, they mention Penn specifically earlier that ep). It may not really be helping if people are still thinking the shows are talking about Penn State, but every little bit helps.

Did I miss a Penn pop culture reference? Be sure to throw a comment up — I tried to collect as many as I could find, but it ain’t exactly easy.

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