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Written by Larry Granillo
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Sunday, 24 January 2010 00:00 |
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I've been lucky recently to have received some praise and recognition for my work looking back at the play of Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the Peanuts ballclub. As I said the first time I wrote about them:
For people who know me well, there are few things that are more obvious to them about me and my personality than my love for the comic strip Peanuts and my kinship with Charlie Brown himself. I realize that this is a fairly geeky thing to admit to, to say the least, but I'm not ashamed of it.
Growing up, there was always something familiar and endearing about the personality of Charlie Brown and the tone of the strip itself that drew me in. I won't say that I learned a lot of life's lessons from Peanuts because one has to actually live life to learn those particular lessons, but, the way those lessons have been expressed in the four panels of a Peanuts comic strip... it's pretty difficult to find someone or something that did it better.
With that said, it's undeniable that Charlie Brown's love for baseball and the way baseball is always around helped me to connect with the comic strip, and it's one of the main reasons that I have gone back to the comic strips over and over again in my life.
So knowing that people enjoy these Peanuts posts so much is a good feeling. In fact, these posts are getting so popular - especially the "Calculating Charlie Brown's Wins, Losses, & Other Stats" pieces - that I think it's best to give them their own section on the blog. This page, then, will act as an index to all the various Peanuts posts I've written. The posts will remain at the same URLs that they've always been at - I just want to give everyone an easy place to find them. If and when I write another Peanuts-themed post, I'll be sure to add it below. In the meantime, follow the links below to get your Peanuts fill.
Wins, Losses, & Other Stats
- The Introduction - A brief overview of what I did to calculate the team's wins and losses
- The 1950s - The first decade of stats, including Charlie Brown's first time on the mound and a slew of other "firsts"
- The 1960s - This is the decade that Peanuts started hitting its stride. This is very evident in the baseball strips, which include Peppermint Patty's and Joe Shlabotnik's debuts and the notorious trade that sent Snoopy across town
- The radio interview - My first radio interview, with the CBC's "As It Happens"
Snoopy & Everything Else
- A-Rod, Aaron, and Snoopy - A look at the issues that faced Snoopy as he raced Hank Aaron to career home run number 714. Some of the finest social commentary that you'll ever see on what Hank Aaron actually had to go through back in 1972
- A Charlie Brown Christmas - A little collection of Peanuts observations on what it's like to win, what it's like to lose, and what it's like to be a fan
- Finding Joe Shlabotnik - Some thoughts on Charlie Brown's favorite player, and who his real-life equivalent could be
As I said, I'll add more links to this page as I write them. In the meantime, this should be a nice, clean, easy place to find my various articles on Charlie Brown and the rest of the Peanuts gang. And to make things even easier, you'll always be able to find this page linked from the menu bar at the top of the page. If you have any questions, be sure to let me know.
Oh, and please never forget, the entire run of Peanuts strips is available for free from the fine folks over at Snoopy.com. What more could you ask?
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About Me
What's with the name?
"Wezen" is the name of a star in the constellation Canis Major ("The Great Dog"). It's the star that marks the, ahem, point where the dog's tail meets its hindlegs. It's a name that I've always liked the sound of and so I used it around the internet.
When I started this blog, I didn't expect to put a lot of time into it, so I just gave it the first name I could think of. Now I like it, no matter how strange it may sound, and I just love how the new banner and background make use of it.
What's the site about?
There is no real, overriding philosophy guiding the posts here at Wezen-Ball.com. Instead, it's just a place for me to write about what I find interesting in the baseball world. Sometimes that means it'll be original statistical research that I've been working on or some other opinions that I might have. Usually, though, I'll be writing about how a certain player, team, or event from the past was viewed through contemporary accounts.
I do this mostly through the use of my collection of annual baseball preview magazines or other resources available online. So, whether it's looking back to see if Jim Rice was truly "feared"by the people who saw him play, or it's looking back to see how Greg Maddux was viewed early in his career, or if it's just looking back to see what people predicted baseball would be like in the year 2000 (from 1981), you'll find it here.
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