Peanuts by Charles Schulz for March 22, 2016

This strip is from 1969 and what is being referenced is the lowering of the pitchers mound. In 1969 after a record low offensive year in baseball in 1968 the pitchers mound was lowered from 15 inches to 10 inches. Rule makers thought that would help offense but what helped baseball and offense(for a couple of years at least) was the addition of 4 expansion teams which temporally put some pitchers into the major leagues who would not have been there otherwise. And FWIW the expansion teams in 1969 were the Kansas City Royals,Seattle Pilots(todays Milwaukee Brewers) Sa Diego Padres and Montreal Expos(Washington Nationals)

This has to be one of the last appearances of Shermy.. His last “official” appearance is listed as June 15th, 1969, but he has only one line (“really”) in the second panel of a Sunday strip.

Adieu, Shermy. The character that speaks the first line in Peanuts.

I remember Shermy saying something to Charlie Brow’s face about his having a psychological need to lose. We never saw much of him after that…I thought maybe their friendship came to an end with that…

“The good news is that it is easier to walk up onto it, the lowered pitcher’s mound; but the bad news is that we’re still not scoring any runs! Somehow, it’s always the other team that scores all the runs!”

Shermy was a nice normal kid. He was no match for the antics of Peppermint Patty and Linus.

Wonder if it’s easier for the other team to knock his clothes off with a lower mound or harder. If easier, then the change in lowering the mound is where the ball is hitting him when it knocks his clothes off.

I think I learned something today about the baseball pitcher’s mound, thanks to paulsonj72…

Charlie Brown is King of the Mound.

xxx

I am convinced that Shermy made his final appearance in the strip on November 9th, 1975. Have a look at the comment that I left under that strip on GoComics. He is mentioned once only after that, in the March 13th 1977 Sunday strip.