I came across a Classic Peanuts comic strip by Charles Schilz in the August 22nd Chicago Tribune, a Sunday expanded strip where good ol' Charlie is trying to get a Joe Shlabotnik baseball card from Lucy, who won't make a trade.
Charlie offers to trade her some of the best players around in the early sixties, but she constantly refuses.
I was a big baseball fan back then and recognize most of the names Charlie offers, but had never heard of Joe Shlabotnik.
According to Wikipedia's List of Minor Characters in Peanuts, it turns out that Joe was a fictional minor character in the Peanuts strip. He never appeared and wasn't even a good minor league baseball player, yet Charlie Brown inexplicably admired him.
Once, Charlie spent $5 to buy 500 baseball cards (back when the cards only cost one cent apiece and you got that free rock hard piece of bubble gum that broke many a tooth and punctured many a gum with sharp edges). He didn't get Joe.
But, Lucy bought one nickle pack and got Charlie's hero. He tried to trade her, but to no avail as she thought he was "kind of cute."
Charlie even had a Joe Shlabotnik Fan Clun News paper. In he he wrote these superlatives about his beloved Joe: Joe was in the Green Grass League where he batted .143. Plus, Joe made "spectacular catches of routine fly balls" and once "threw out a runner who had fallen down between first and second."
Tomorrow, I will give you a list of the ballplayers Charlie was willing to trade for Joe.
So, That's Who Joe Shlabotnik Is!! --RoadDog
SENIOR BUMPER SNICKERS: At my age..."Gettin' Any?" means sleep!!.
Being an account of some things I'm interested in, what I'm doing, and reflections on my past, especially music.
Listen to this man. Seven years of college, you know. Trying to reason with 2020 and, now, 2022.
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