Ironically (or not) I've seen smoking gun attributed to Arthur Conan Doyle in a Sherlock Holmes story. (It was smoking pistol in that story). Even if that's rubbish, I think that one is common across the English speaking world. The baseball/American football stuff is a bit different. In the commonwealth we might say "Hit for six" instead of hitting it out of the park. There are a bunch of other ones related to sports more common in England like snookered, own-goal, red card, etc.

That observation about Sherlock Holmes certainly puts the smackdown on me and gets you to home plate.