wezen-ball: Calculating Charlie Brown’s Wins, Losses, & Other Stats: Introduction

Yerkles! This is more involved than Linus Pauling’s orbital hybridisation theory!

There are a few certainties in life: death, taxes, writers making moronic decisions in the Hall of Fame vote, and Charlie Brown’s baseball team getting trounced every summer.

For fifty years, Charlie Brown took the field with his makeshift ballclub - the piano playing Schroeder behind the plate, the apathetic Lucy in centerfield, the blanket-toting Linus at second, and Snoopy, the slobbery superstar, at shortstop - and took beating after beating. Finding themselves on the wrong side of scores like 123-0 and 93-0 on a regular basis, the Peanuts crew was just never the talented powerhouse that Charlie Brown hoped for. But boy did they try. Few managers, and few teams, would have the heart to go out there day-after-day against such odds, but Charlie Brown and his crew were forever optimistic. It was endearing.

But losing takes it toll - if not on Charlie Brown’s spirits then, at the very least, in the record books. After decades of losing and seemingly-countless knockdown line-drives up the middle (the first one came in 1963), the stats can’t look too favorably on Team Peanuts. However, save for a short time when Linus was also team statistician, no one has ever taken the time to compile their stats. Granted, they aren’t going to be pretty, but someone should find the answer to the questions: how many games did Charlie Brown’s team lose? how many did they win? how many times did Charlie Brown get knocked over by a line-drive?