Our Periodic Peanuts in the News Roundup

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1. Unca $crooge

   I probably would have loved baseball had there never been a Willie Mays but he sure made it a lot easier. Early on, I picked the Giants as “my” team mainly because my middle brother was a Dodgers fan. I grew up on the Washington coast, 800 miles from San Francisco but I could pick up Giant night games on my little radio. it was so frustrating to be a fan back then because they had very good teams but usually ended up in second or third place. ’62 was the magical year where they caught the Dodgers on the last day of the season. The Giants had trailed by four games with seven to go but the Dodgers lost six of those games and the Giants won five to tie. in the season’s final series, the Dodgers were swept at home by the Cards, losing the first game in extras and then getting shut out the final two. The Giants had to play a Saturday twin-bill with the Colt .45s after a Friday rainout and split the two games. In the last game of the regular season, Mays hit a game-winning eighth inning homerun (#47) as the Giants won 2-1. In the first game of the three-game playoff, Mays hit a first-inning homerun off Sandy Koufax and the Giants rolled to an easy 8-0 win as Mays later added #49. In game 2, the Giants blew a 5-0 sixth inning lead when the Dodgers ended a 33-inning (!) scoreless streak by scoring seven runs and then the winning run in the bottom of the ninth in an 8-7 game. In game 165, the Dodgers held a 4-2 lead into the top of the 9th but the Giants scored four on a bunch of walks and a couple of singles. In the World Series against the mighty Yankees, the teams split the first six ames. In the deciding seventh game, the Yankees lead 1-0 in the bottom of the ninth. With two outs, the Giants had runners on second and third with Willie McCovey at bat. McCovey hit a line drive but it was caught by Bobby Richardson to end the game. On December 22, 1962, Schulz had a strip where Charlie Brown and Linus are sitting on a street curb, looking disconsolate, heads in their hands, for three panels. Finally, Charlie Brown rises and shouts to the sky, “Why couldn’t McCovey have hit that ball three feet higher!” He had a similar strip involving the same two again lamenting the misfortunes the Baseball Gods had wrought on their beloved Jints.

   1. Unca $crooge

      The 12/22/62 strip can be found at: https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1962/12/22

   2. Bill Abelson

      After Dec. 22, 1962, Schulz actually had TWO nearly identical strips over the next few months. In the first, Charlie shouts “Why couldn’t McCovey have hit the ball TWO feet higher?” In the last he shouts “Why couldn’t McCovey have hit the ball ONE foot higher?”

      1. Unca $crooge

         The two-feet strip was from 1/28/1963, not sure about the other one. Schulz was a big S.F. Giant fan having moved to the Bay area about the same time the Giants did. There was a Sunday strip a few years later where Snoopy was in the Giant’s locker room. I don’t remember the gag but he listed several Giant players.