Strip 11: SLIDE!, 9/8/51
Maybe a little foreshadowing of a future book title... or just a good punchline.
Strip 11: SLIDE!, 9/8/51
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If a kid is wearing a baseball cap, he must be playing baseball, right? I was sure this was a baseball strip in its truest sense when I saw Shermy in his hat, telling Charlie Brown to slide. Shermy even looks like one of the base coaches here. But no, they’re not on the diamond. They’re at the playground, and Shermy is cheering him on going down the slide, not sliding into a base. A simple misdirection joke, and it made me chuckle.
Peanuts fans probably know that the panels are a sort of (completely unintentional) foreshadowing of one of the later book titles, “SLIDE, CHARLIE BROWN, SLIDE!” By then the baseball themes will be fully established and the series that actually led to that title will be one of the funniest ones. For now, though, the kids like baseball, but they like a few other things too, even Charlie Brown.
The strip is nearly a year old at this point, and the cast is now up to six. Violet and Schroeder have joined the original four. Violet seems to be the same age as the others, but Schroeder is a baby at this point, not able to join them on the ball field quite yet and probably why we haven’t seen him in this series yet. In the coming weeks, he’ll discover the piano and we’ll be introduced to his obsession with Beethoven, his most defining trait. As we’ll see, he loves baseball too, but it’s his secondary passion, not his first.
I read somewhere that part of the reason Shermy didn’t appear much in the strip after awhile was because he had trouble drawing his hair consistently. I can picture him in the later 50s and 60s strips with something like a buzz cut, but in these he looks like his hair is parted somehow under his hat. Characters evolve over time.
With roughly three weeks left in the season, the AL is a very tight race, with Cleveland just half a game ahead of the Yankees. Boston is only four back. The Dodgers still have a comfortable 6.5 game lead on the Giants, though not as comfortable as it was last month. I looked ahead at the strips and there won’t be any baseball to cover until after the World Series, but if you’re here, you’re probably enough of a baseball fan to know the result. It was also highlighted on an episode of M*A*S*H. The Yankees will edge out the Indians, and as hard as it is to believe, the Giants will catch the Dodgers and force a one-game playoff, which they will win in the bottom of the 9th on Bobby Thompson’s Shot Heard ‘Round The World. In October, the Yankees will win their third straight World Series (and fourth in five seasons). They are still in the early stages of the most dominant stretch by any team in baseball, or maybe sports, history. Over 18 seasons between 1947 and 1964, they will go to all but three World Series, winning 10 of them. I may have enjoyed typing that last sentence a little too much.
While the date of the strip is September 8, the date of this posting is November 26, and I’m guessing that readers (if any) know that this is the birthday of creator Charles M. Schulz. It’s really quite amazing, this empire he created. I’ve mentioned previously a little bit about his life, and better biographers than me (which is all of them) have told his story in more detail. For today, in honor of his birthday, I want to post my favorite strip, one that stayed with me since the day I first read it. We’ll revisit it and I’ll discuss it’s impact on me (even though it’s not a baseball strip) in due time - it’s about 19 years in the strip’s future, and I was six months old when it premiered. It’s not the funniest, nor is it a “me” strip (we’ll get to those too). But I learned from it, and I hope my kids did too.
What is your favorite Peanuts strip?
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Next: A Brief Football Diversion