"Peanuts" - was Joe Schlabotnik a real person?

Trillionaire · April 22, 2004, 7:23am

He was a baseball player who Charlie Brown idolised: did he actually exist?

DrDeth · April 22, 2004, 7:36am

Fictional. Although there certainly could have been a minor leaguer by that name somewhere sometime.

ElvisL1ves · April 22, 2004, 4:03pm

Who knew former journeyman infielder Dickie Thon has his own website with book reviews?

Another constant throughout the cartoons is Charlie Brown’s adulation of professional baseball player Joe Shlabotnik. Much like Charlie Brown himself, Joe isn’t much of a player. But he does at one point in the book get a job as playing manager of the Waffletown Syrups. Charlie Brown is on his way to see his hero play in person for the very first time, but he gets to the game in the second inning and Shlabotnik has already been fired for calling a squeeze play with no one on base.

I think the best thing that comes out of reading Sandlot Peanuts is that it can renew that child-like innocent love of baseball that is so easily lost when you follow today’s big-money world of professional sports on a day-to-day basis. Charlie Brown plays for the love of the game, pure and simple. Though he’d like to win, it’s not top priority. To him, the simple act of holding your fingers across the seams of a genuine baseball while standing on a genuine baseball mound on a genuine baseball field is the greatest feeling in the world. It’s a game. I think all baseball fans need a little reminder of this sometimes, and Sandlot Peanuts is the perfect book to bring this feeling back to even the most jaded of baseball fans.

silenus · April 22, 2004, 4:47pm

Fictional, but everybody still talks about him. I counted 272 hits when I Googled his name just now.

RiverRunner · April 22, 2004, 5:37pm

My signon for my fantasy baseball league was “shlabotnik.” I thought I was the only one who remembered.
RR

ElvisL1ves · April 23, 2004, 3:34am

Even a real player couldn’t hold a job in the Green Grass League batting .004.

BobT · April 23, 2004, 4:07am

dickiethon.com is a fan site, not a vanity site.