The blockheads

By Jon Weisman

Sometimes I wonder why Charlie Brown got so much abuse.

I’ve reread a ton of “Peanuts” over the past year with my kids, comics I had practically memorized to begin with, and at a certain point you wonder just what’s going on. You’ll see Charlie Brown with a healthy relationship with several characters, most of all Linus, who is respected throughout the neighborhood and whose addictions to a blanket, thumbsucking and the Great Pumpkin are tolerated by everyone except Lucy (who is intolerant of just about everything).

Charlie Brown is clearly a worthwhile member of the community, not only a good listener but frequently a good advisor and often surprisingly resourceful. There’s little he wouldn’t do for another human being, much less his dog. But then, not infrequently, you’ll see someone like Violet absolutely tee off on him, filling four panels with how worthless he is.

And you realize what’s going on. Charlie Brown doesn’t do well in school or in sports or with red-haired girls or in any other tangible activity. He has been a loser, in the literal sense, all his life. That’s all that matters.

Charlie Brown would look at stories like “The Bad News Bears” or “Rocky” or “Rudy,” stories where the players are celebrated even when they fall short, as ridiculous fantasies — as lies. In the eyes of the neighborhood, his loserhood defines him, obliterating any positive qualities he might have.

This might seem an extremist position for Charles M. Schulz to have taken, but in the world of sports, he was really on to something. I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve seen the following:

[Team] falls short of goal. [Team] didn’t have enough heart.

[Team] achieves goal. [Team] had heart.

“Heart,” which is apparently some intangible combination of will, effort, moral superiority and defying expectations, is clearly assigned based on results, more than anything that’s remotely substantiated.

It’s ridiculous, isn’t it? This idea that only winners — or to be extremely generous, losers who survive past certain circumstances —have heart? That with every single setback, your level of heart diminishes unless you overcome it.

If you asked the average person which was the last Dodger team to have heart was, they’d probably say “1988.” Why? Mainly because Orel Hershiser was dominant, Mickey Hatcher had impeccable timing and Kirk Gibson had the swing of a generation. No small things, those, but without any one of them, the 1988 Dodgers would just be another in a 33-year line of failed promise.

You won’t find 10 people in America who think that the 2014 Dodgers had more heart than the Kansas City Royals have — in fact, you’ll find thousands more, right here in Los Angeles, in the deepest, most passionate parts of the fan base, who are sure the Dodgers had no heart.

It’s not because the Dodgers didn’t run hard on the bases or dive in the field. It’s not because the Royals haven’t had suspect pitching performances or made the wrong managerial decisions.

It’s because at the end of the day, the Royals won, and the Dodgers lost, and the Royals weren’t expected to win, and the Dodgers were. Which, when you look at it, is a silly way to judge whether an entire group of people had heart.

And it’s funny to always hear people say that the team had no heart, even though you’d have trouble looking at the 2014 Dodgers player by player and casually labeling many or even any of them as heartless.

It’s fair to call the 2014 Dodgers disappointing because they didn’t reach or win the World Series. That was the expectation, that was the dream. They believed, and many of us believed. But just because they weren’t good enough or lucky enough — just because they fell short — you can’t assume that’s a failure of will, or effort, or desire, or character.

Yeah, they’re blockheads. But they aren’t soulless.