Charlotte Braun - Joe Shlabotnik

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; equal to $37 adjusted for inflation) 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.
• In a series of strips in 1996-97, Charlie Brown purchases a baseball signed by Joe Shlabotnik, but it turns out to be a forgery.
• Schroeder points out that the reason Joe Shlabotnik is sent back down to the minors is because he has a .004 batting average.