Big News Coming Soon

Minnie

The action has been hot and heavy between the MBC 16's and several high profile free agents. Coach Cougan has been seen in negotiations with the following:

Cecil Feilder; Joe Shlabotnik*, the Ewell twins, Robbie Dunbar, Minnie Minosa** and the San Diego Chicken. Rumors are flying hot and heavy and it is just a matter of time before Coach Cougan lands one of these fantastic players. Please stay tuned. Film at 11:00; but that is way past your bedtime - so don't stay up for it!

But you can learn a lot by reading, especially about old ball players. And if you are not a good reader, maybe you can start on the comic's (like I did) and comic books. After you get the hang it, you move on to books.

*Joe Shlabotnik is a minor-league baseball player who, inexplicably, is greatly admired by Charlie Brown. He never appears in the strip, but is occasionally mentioned by Charlie Brown as his hero and is part of several plots involving Charlie Brown:

• Joe is introduced (with no name yet) when Charlie Brown reads in the paper that his "baseball hero" is sent down to the minor leagues for a low batting average.
• In 1964, Charlie spends $5.00 (a huge sum of money for a child back then) on 500 penny packs of bubble-gum cards (incidentally, the last year Topps offers penny packs) to get a Joe Shlabotnik card, but none of the 500 cards he buys has Joe's picture. Lucy then buys one penny pack, and it turns out to be a Joe card. Charlie Brown offers Lucy his entire baseball card collection in trade for Lucy's Joe Shlabotnik card, which he has been trying to get for five years. Lucy declines, then (after Charlie Brown walks away, dejected) throws the card into a receptacle, deciding Joe is "not as cute as I thought he was."
• In his Joe Shlabotnik Fan Club News, Charlie Brown writes that Joe, now playing in the Green Grass League, batted .143, made some "spectacular catches of routine fly balls" and "threw out a runner who had fallen down between first and second." The newsletter lasts only one issue, owing to Lucy's comment on it: "Who needs it?"
• Charlie Brown and Linus attend a sports banquet so that Charlie Brown can sit next to planned attendee Joe Shlabotnik, who doesn't show up because he had "marked the wrong date on his calendar, the wrong city, and the wrong event.
• Charlie Brown's baseball teammates invite Joe to be guest speaker at a testimonial dinner honoring Charlie Brown's dedication as their manager. Joe accepts the invitation for a reduced speaking fee (down from his usual $100 fee), because all they can offer is 50 cents. However, they cancel the dinner at the last minute when they decide it would be hypocritical because they would be giving Charlie Brown untruthful praise. Joe gets lost along the way and doesn't show up for the dinner.
• Charlie Brown discovers that Joe is managing the Waffletown Syrups in a location near his summer camp, so Charlie Brown attends the game and cheers Joe on as he manages. Somehow catching a foul ball, Charlie Brown waits after the game for Joe to sign it, only to find out that he's been fired for "signaling for a squeeze play with nobody on base." Charlie Brown finally meets Joe in person when he catches up with Joe as his bus is about to leave. Joe autographs the baseball, but hits Charlie Brown on the head with it (demonstrating his incompetence in baseball) when he throws it to him as the bus departs. This is the last we hear of Joe Shlabotnik.
• Schroeder points out that the reason Joe Shlabotnik is sent back down to the minors is because he has a .004 batting average.

**Saturnino Orestes Armas "Minnie" Miñoso Arrieta (Spanish pronunciation: [miˈɲoso]; English: /mɨˈnoʊsoʊ/; born November 29, 1925 in Havana, Cuba), is a former star left fielder in Major League Baseball. He had earlier been a standout third baseman in the Negro Leagues, and would later play several seasons in Mexico. He was nicknamed "The Cuban Comet" as well as "Mr. White Sox", and while playing in Mexico was "El Charro Negro" — "The Black Cowboy". He is one of just two players in Major League history to play in five separate decades (1940s-80s), the other being Nick Altrock. With brief appearances with the independent Northern League's St. Paul Saints in 1993 and 2003, Miñoso is the only player to have played professionally in seven different decades. He was also the last Major Leaguer to have played in the 1940s to play a Major League game.