Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US baseball) to hit on the head, thus n. beaning.

1910		Amer. Mag. 398/2: He is in extreme danger of being ‘beaned’, which, in baseball, means hit in the head [DA].
1912		Wash. Times (DC) 17 June 12/6: ‘I’ve been “beaned” only once [...] and it wasn’t exactly a “beaning,” either, for I got the ball in the neck’.
1914		Ade ‘The New Fable of the Lonesome Camp’ in Ade’s Fables 274: Once in a while he would try to crowd into the Conversation just to let them know that old Ready Money was still present, but [...] Dearie would do her blamedest to Bean him and put him out of the Game.
1919		Van Loan ‘Chivalry in Carbon County’ in Score by Innings (2004) 327: She shook her bat at me [...] and said if I ‘beaned’ her, she’d bust it over my head.
1920		A. Baer Says ‘Bugs‘ Baer 23 Aug. [synd. col.] [headline] Average Player Lasts 10 Years in Big League. Chance of Beaning Smaller Than a Split Oat.
1925		Wodehouse Carry on, Jeeves 39: I can almost see the headlines: ‘Promising Young Artist Beans Baby With Axe’.
1931		D. Runyon ‘Earthquake’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 164: Maybe a coconut drops down and beans him.
1942		N. Algren Never Come Morning (1988) 12: I hope that Kodadek gets beaned for keeps ’n never comes to.
1954		Wodehouse Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit 148: Jeeves had had occasion to bean a policeman with it.
1956		N. Algren Walk on the Wild Side 218: The king [...] bounded one short confident step forward, pitched himself ass over appetite, beaned himself beautifully on the table’s edge and crushed flat, shoulders shaking.
1960		Wodehouse Jeeves in the Offing 83: I shall have to exercise an iron self-restraint to keep me from beaning that pie-faced little hornswoggler.
1974		(con. 1960s) R. Price Wanderers 161: The first victim [...] got beaned with a looseleaf.
1986		H.B. Gilmour Pretty in Pink 15: This scrawny eight-year-old [...] stepped up behind Lucille and beaned her with a board.
1991		B. Stewart Broken Arse II vi: You white trash slag! I’ll beanse ya!
2008		R. Price Lush Life 39: A cop beaned with a marble up in Harlem .
2015		Oshkosh Northwestern (WI) 10 Mar. B2/2: Don Zimmer [...] lay unconscious for nearly two weeks after being beaned [...] A fast ball felled Pete Reisner in one of the [...] worst beanings in 1947.