By far, Charlie Brown's favorite sport is baseball. He is occasionally shown playing other sports, most prominently when he tries to kick Lucy's football, but baseball is where his heart and his passion lies.
One of the ironies of Peanuts is that, for someone who thinks of himself as a friendless loser, year after year he successfully convinces the neighborhood kids to play on his baseball team, with him as manager and pitcher. This despite the fact that even though he loves baseball, he is objectively terrible at it. Nearly every pitch he throws seems to come back to him at such a speed that he ends up almost naked on the mound. Meanwhile, his team loses game after game after game.
Debuting almost exactly six months to the day after A Charlie Brown Christmas, Charlie Brown's All-Stars! is, appropriately enough for a special debuting in June, all about baseball. The cold open sets the stage, as Charlie Brown goes to truly heroic lengths to catch a long fly ball, up to and including running through someone's house, only to have the ball ultimately pop out of his glove. Not only does it make clear this is all about America's pastime, but it's also all about just how much abuse can be piled on top of poor Charlie Brown.
After yet another loss (123 to nothing), nearly the entire team quits, leaving Charlie Brown to finally decide to resign as manager. However, salvation is on its way as Linus manages to convince a local hardware store owner to sponsor the team, which would come complete with uniforms and a spot in an actual league. But there's a catch--it's a (human) boys only league, which means that Lucy, Frieda, Patty, Violet, and Snoopy would have to be cut. Charlie Brown isn't willing to drop half his team, so he turns down the offer--but of course, he only learns of the catch after informing everyone about the sponsorship.
One of the things that set it apart from A Charlie Brown Christmas, other than the change in seasons, is that from beginning to near the end, Charlie Brown has a torrent of hate from just about everyone. Charlie Brown got hated on during Christmas some, most notably when he brings in the little tree, but most of the negativity comes from Charlie Brown himself. Here, he has his usual low self-esteem, but it really feels like everyone is ganging up on him frequently: during the cold open, when he drops the ball, during a sequence in which everyone (including Linus, Snoopy, and Sally, who doesn't even play on her brother's team) skateboards past him with their noses up, and of course, when he loses yet another game and confesses there will be no uniforms. It's just somewhat unpleasant to watch.
That is not to say there aren't any pleasures here. The extended skateboard scene is actually rather striking, and we get to see one of Snoopy's first flights of fancy in animated form, when he imagines Linus's kiddie pool into an ocean for him to surf in (incidentally, modern viewers will assume that the music during this sequence was recycled from A Charlie Brown Christmas, but in actually, that piece, titled "Surfin' Snoopy" was introduced in this special, and then edited into the earlier special, replacing the original music).
Charlie Brown's All-Stars! was well-received when it debuted, and would be nominated for an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program and would be repeated annually for several years by CBS. But, like the other non-holiday specials, it eventually fell out of the rotation. It's worth checking out, but it pales in comparison with both its predecessor and successor.
Next week: Linus waits in the pumpkin patch on Halloween night in It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.
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