Rockies: While Other Cartoons Are Zany, Snoopy Reminds Us Of The Horrors Of World War I

The Colorado Rockies are 8-41. Wednesday night’s 9-5 loss to the Phillies was their fourth in a row. Their .163 winning percentage is the worst in baseball. They have scored 164 runs and allowed 321. No one on the team’s hitting over .288; Ryan Feltner is the only starter with an ERA under 5.00. They are really bad.

This naturally makes it hard for in-house media to find anything positive to say about the team. By going out there every day and Being The Rockies, the worst team in the sport seems to have broken the brains of its PR team. Purple Row writer Renee Dechert snapped this photo at last night’s game.

The scoreboard displayed some commentary on Snoopy:

Lists of best/favorite cartoon characters rarely include THE most underated animated star of all time: Snoopy! Snoopy is a loyal, imaginative, and good-natured beagle. While the usual top suspects make their names on zaniness and mischief, Charlie Brown’s best buddy thrives on a vivid imagination that brings fantasy alter-egos to life, including being an author, a college student known as “Joe Cool,” an attorney, and a World War I flying ace.

It is right there on the Jumbotron, which means that it is now the official position of the Colorado Rockies that, while most popular cartoon characters make their names on zaniness and mischief, Snoopy does it differently. He writes books. He takes college classes. He practices law. And he pretends he is fighting in the First World War, a terrible conflict that saw tens of millions killed. “Almost 100,000 British soldiers were killed in the Battle of the Somme,” this imaginative beagle reminds us. “Scholars believe poison gas was the third-leading cause of death during the war,” the beloved animated star notes.

In 1989’s Good Grief: The Story of Charles Schulz, Rheta Grimsley Johnson wrote that Snoopy’s vivid imagination was what made Peanuts such a classic comic strip and cartoon. “Schulz concedes that Peanuts reached the height of its popularity on Snoopy’s biwings,” she writes. “In October 1965, Snoopy the World War I Flying Ace was introduced and they went crazy for Peanuts. The strip caught fire and became that frightening, all-consuming beast, the Pop Phenomenon.” She continues:

So to the Red Baron episodes falls the bittersweet distinction of being the pinnacle of Peanuts. It worked beautifully, so beautifully that nothing can be expected to duplicate it.

Schulz abandoned the theme as the fury of the Vietnam War increased: “It reached a point where war just didn’t seem funny.”

He later resumed the adventures of the World War I Flying Ace, but with more emphasis on love and loneliness than on crashing and burning.

As such, the Rockies admittedly do make a good argument for Snoopy’s inclusion among the top toons. But is he actually underrated? Paste’s “The 50 Best Cartoon Characters Of All Time” has him third. He’s seventh on Ranker’s “The Greatest Cartoon Characters in TV History,” a list updated just six days ago. He is ninth in Looper’s “65 Best Cartoon Characters Of All Time, Ranked.” Buzzfeed’s “Here Are The 80 Most Famous Cartoon Characters Of All Time,” on the other hand, puts him 42nd.

Obviously ranking Snoopy 28 slots behind Jimmy Neutron, as Buzzfeed does, is unconscionable. But this does not mean Snoopy is underrated or overlooked when lists of top toons are generated by human writers or AI slop algorithms, or human writers making use of AI slop algorithms. Sure, Snoopy is unranked on Animaker’s “57 Iconic Cartoon Characters of all time! [The Ultimate List],” but I think that one can be ignored. It claims to be the ultimate list, but there is a Buzzfeed one with twenty-three more cartoon characters on it. How can we trust it? Does “ultimate” not mean anything anymore?

If there’s actually an underrated Peanuts character, it’s Peppermint Patty. She’s a great baseball player. She gets a D-minus on every test. She did not know Snoopy was a dog until 1974. Now there’s someone who could use some press. Hopefully the Rockies will give her the credit she’s due on the scoreboard before losing a game by six runs.