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Who's on First, Charlie Brown?
The bases are loaded with potential runs, but Charlie Brown’s head is loaded with irksome questions: Will he throw the ball right? Is the little red-haired girl watching? Will Lucy call him Blockhead? It doesn’t help that the seasoned pro at the plate, Peppermint Patty, is staring him down. So Charlie Brown shuffles, winds up, and lets the pitch fly. . . .
Though we all know how the score will add up for Charlie Brown and his team (not quite as high as they expected), with the Peanuts gang, the fun is not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game!
Though we all know how the score will add up for Charlie Brown and his team (not quite as high as they expected), with the Peanuts gang, the fun is not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game!
272 pages, Paperback
First published April 27, 2004
About the author
Charles M. Schulz
3,020 books1,660 followersCharles Monroe Schulz was an American cartoonist, whose comic strip Peanuts proved one of the most popular and influential in the history of the medium, and is still widely reprinted on a daily basis.
Schulz's first regular cartoons, Li'l Folks, were published from 1947 to 1950 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press; he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post; the first of 17 single-panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there. In 1948, Schulz tried to have Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal fell through. Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January, 1950.
Later that year, Schulz approached the United Feature Syndicate with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. The strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time. He also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip called It's Only a Game (1957–1959), but he abandoned it due to the demands of the successful Peanuts. From 1956 to 1965 he contributed a single-panel strip ("Young Pillars") featuring teenagers to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.
Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years, almost without interruption; during the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997. At its peak, Peanuts appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. Schulz stated that his routine every morning consisted of eating a jelly donut and sitting down to write the day's strip. After coming up with an idea (which he said could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours), he began drawing it, which took about an hour for dailies and three hours for Sunday strips. He stubbornly refused to hire an inker or letterer, saying that "it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him." In November 1999 Schulz suffered a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized. Because of the chemotherapy and the fact he could not read or see clearly, he announced his retirement on December 14, 1999.
Schulz often touched on religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible Luke 2:8-14 to explain "what Christmas is all about." In personal interviews Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side. Schulz, reared in the Lutheran faith, had been active in the Church of God as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church. In the 1960s, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as being consistent with parts of Christian theology, and used them as illustrations during his lectures about the gospel, as he explained in his bestselling paperback book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, the first of several books he wrote on religion and Peanuts, and other popular culture items. From the late 1980s, however, Schulz described himself in interviews as a "secular humanist": “I do not go to church anymore... I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in.”
Schulz's first regular cartoons, Li'l Folks, were published from 1947 to 1950 by the St. Paul Pioneer Press; he first used the name Charlie Brown for a character there, although he applied the name in four gags to three different boys and one buried in sand. The series also had a dog that looked much like Snoopy. In 1948, Schulz sold a cartoon to The Saturday Evening Post; the first of 17 single-panel cartoons by Schulz that would be published there. In 1948, Schulz tried to have Li'l Folks syndicated through the Newspaper Enterprise Association. Schulz would have been an independent contractor for the syndicate, unheard of in the 1940s, but the deal fell through. Li'l Folks was dropped from the Pioneer Press in January, 1950.
Later that year, Schulz approached the United Feature Syndicate with his best strips from Li'l Folks, and Peanuts made its first appearance on October 2, 1950. The strip became one of the most popular comic strips of all time. He also had a short-lived sports-oriented comic strip called It's Only a Game (1957–1959), but he abandoned it due to the demands of the successful Peanuts. From 1956 to 1965 he contributed a single-panel strip ("Young Pillars") featuring teenagers to Youth, a publication associated with the Church of God.
Peanuts ran for nearly 50 years, almost without interruption; during the life of the strip, Schulz took only one vacation, a five-week break in late 1997. At its peak, Peanuts appeared in more than 2,600 newspapers in 75 countries. Schulz stated that his routine every morning consisted of eating a jelly donut and sitting down to write the day's strip. After coming up with an idea (which he said could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours), he began drawing it, which took about an hour for dailies and three hours for Sunday strips. He stubbornly refused to hire an inker or letterer, saying that "it would be equivalent to a golfer hiring a man to make his putts for him." In November 1999 Schulz suffered a stroke, and later it was discovered that he had colon cancer that had metastasized. Because of the chemotherapy and the fact he could not read or see clearly, he announced his retirement on December 14, 1999.
Schulz often touched on religious themes in his work, including the classic television cartoon, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), which features the character Linus van Pelt quoting the King James Version of the Bible Luke 2:8-14 to explain "what Christmas is all about." In personal interviews Schulz mentioned that Linus represented his spiritual side. Schulz, reared in the Lutheran faith, had been active in the Church of God as a young adult and then later taught Sunday school at a United Methodist Church. In the 1960s, Robert L. Short interpreted certain themes and conversations in Peanuts as being consistent with parts of Christian theology, and used them as illustrations during his lectures about the gospel, as he explained in his bestselling paperback book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, the first of several books he wrote on religion and Peanuts, and other popular culture items. From the late 1980s, however, Schulz described himself in interviews as a "secular humanist": “I do not go to church anymore... I guess you might say I've come around to secular humanism, an obligation I believe all humans have to others and the world we live in.”
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 16, 2023
I always loved Peanuts and the connection between the strip and baseball is amazing. This is a great collection of some of the best Peanuts strips related to baseball from the beginning to the end. It loses a bit by not having all of certain storylines included and skipping around alot but lovers of Peanuts will definitely enjoy!
March 22, 2020
The baseball comic strips aren't my favorites but if you love baseball this book is full of them! I loved that they are separated by year and there's a wonderful introduction by the great Cal Ripkin Jr.
October 24, 2017
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Summary:
Well it starts out as a kid named charlie brown from the early years of the 1900s loves the game baseball he knows all the great players, and then he decides to make his own team with the neighborhood kids that aren’t even that good.
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Important 1:
The team starts out strong in practice only missing a few ground ball here and there. But he soon realizes after a few games that his is team sucks and isn’t very good.
-
Important 2:
They win their first game even though it was because of a walk that made them win the were all so happy the danced for a good while and then, it got stolen from them because of a betting scandal.
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important 3:
Meets a rivaling team that is just the neighborhood over a girl named peppermint patty. She hears that charlie brown’s team need the get better at the game she tries to help them at first, then she realizes that they are all lost cause and then decides to leave.
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Important 4:
Charlie brown decides to help peppermint patty with some fund raisers, and decides to sell popcorn to the crowd at the game but he wants to pitch in the game so bad that in the last inning with two outs and, a 50-0 lead she lets him pitch but the first pitch was so wild that it hits peppermint patty on the head and she got knocked out, about 5 hours later she wakes at her home and Violet gray was sitting there, and tells peppermint patty that their team lost 50-51.
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Important 5:
He trades his dog snoopy for five extra players for a hope for a better team, peppermint patty came over, with a contract and had charlie brown sign. Then he realize that it was his own dog he just sold and decides to not do it. But peppermint patty had to do it because the 5 new players never came because they said they would give up baseball before they came on his team
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Characters:
Charlie brown, snoopy, lucy, linus, schroeder, patty, sally brown, pig pen, frieda, violet gray, shermy
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Why you liked it or not:
I like it because it is humorous and i naturally love baseball and all of the other sports and stuff but that their team sucks so bad makes it funny and all of the jokes and stuff.
I like the quality of the characters… especially charlie brown. Because he loves baseball a lot and he acts like a manger except managers… you know don’t play in real games, but it is good for the book because he gets to play and it's a book about him.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
Summary:
Well it starts out as a kid named charlie brown from the early years of the 1900s loves the game baseball he knows all the great players, and then he decides to make his own team with the neighborhood kids that aren’t even that good.
-
Important 1:
The team starts out strong in practice only missing a few ground ball here and there. But he soon realizes after a few games that his is team sucks and isn’t very good.
-
Important 2:
They win their first game even though it was because of a walk that made them win the were all so happy the danced for a good while and then, it got stolen from them because of a betting scandal.
-
important 3:
Meets a rivaling team that is just the neighborhood over a girl named peppermint patty. She hears that charlie brown’s team need the get better at the game she tries to help them at first, then she realizes that they are all lost cause and then decides to leave.
-
Important 4:
Charlie brown decides to help peppermint patty with some fund raisers, and decides to sell popcorn to the crowd at the game but he wants to pitch in the game so bad that in the last inning with two outs and, a 50-0 lead she lets him pitch but the first pitch was so wild that it hits peppermint patty on the head and she got knocked out, about 5 hours later she wakes at her home and Violet gray was sitting there, and tells peppermint patty that their team lost 50-51.
-
Important 5:
He trades his dog snoopy for five extra players for a hope for a better team, peppermint patty came over, with a contract and had charlie brown sign. Then he realize that it was his own dog he just sold and decides to not do it. But peppermint patty had to do it because the 5 new players never came because they said they would give up baseball before they came on his team
-
Characters:
Charlie brown, snoopy, lucy, linus, schroeder, patty, sally brown, pig pen, frieda, violet gray, shermy
-
Why you liked it or not:
I like it because it is humorous and i naturally love baseball and all of the other sports and stuff but that their team sucks so bad makes it funny and all of the jokes and stuff.
I like the quality of the characters… especially charlie brown. Because he loves baseball a lot and he acts like a manger except managers… you know don’t play in real games, but it is good for the book because he gets to play and it's a book about him.
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 24, 2016
The marriage of Peanuts and baseball results in some crazy thinking and strategy. This is just a fun little book about a troubled baseball season. I always think of Charlie Brown and his baseball diamond troubles.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews