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Comic relief: Blogger documents Charlie Brown's losing ways

Story Tim Olsen | Photo by Ben Smidt

With the Major League Baseball season well under way, several teams have already sunk way behind the division leaders, nestled at the bottom of the standings. But with cries of "Wait till next year" already starting, even the worst of those teams can take solace in having achieved more success than baseball's all-time most loveable losers. No, it's not the Chicago Cubs and their 100-plus years since a World Series championship. Nor is it the 1962 New York Mets. It's not even the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.

The most inept but endearing assembly of baseball players, Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, began their storied history of baseball losses — at least from what can be gleaned from their comic strips — on May 28, 1952, losing 83-12. Since that time, we've witnessed their legendary ways of losing baseball games by gargantuan scores, a double-play combination of a dog and a thumb-sucking kid with a blanket, and countless line drives causing Charlie Brown's wardrobe malfunctions.

But year after year, how bad were they really? Larry Granillo, data management coordinator in Marquette's Student Financial Aid office, decided to find out. In his baseball blog Wezen-Ball.com, Granillo documented the Peanuts gang's baseball success, or lack of it, from that 1952 game through the 1970 season. "Using my collection of Peanuts books (which only goes through 1970 for now — I've got to get on that), I've done my best to find every baseball-related strip produced in those 20 years and tally up any relevant stats that they reveal," says Granillo on his blog.

As both a big baseball fan and Peanuts fan, Granillo felt the challenge was a natural for his combined interests. "I just thought that going through the Peanuts archives and cataloging all of the baseball strips — recording wins and losses, recapping some of the great storylines, reminding people of the jokes — would be something fun for fans to see," says Granillo, whose blog has also attracted the attention of ESPN and USA Today. "There are a lot of gems in 50 years of work, and not everyone has seen them all."

Granillo also points out the social commentary in some of the baseball strips. "Charles Schulz would often comment on the issues of the day in his stories — a great example is showing the racism that Hank Aaron had to go through while chasing Babe Ruth's record by making Snoopy go through the same issues," says Granillo. "It's not hard to find relevant comics from the 1960s or 1970s that apply just as well today."

And the final tally for what can definitively be determined for the Peanuts gang's wins and losses over their first 20 years? According to Granillo, nine (maybe) wins and 85 losses.

"Charlie Brown has to be my favorite character in the strip," says Granillo. "He just wants to get things right and lead his team to glory. His attitude and frustrations are things I identified with as a kid."