RIP Willie Mays
- By : Nat
- Category : Animated Peanuts
Willie Mays has died. The baseball great lived until the age of 1993.
“Why is that relevant to a Peanuts blog?” I hear of a few of you cry (though many of you know better.)
Before Lee Mendelson had any connection to Peanuts, he made a documentary about Mays… and it was that documentary that convinced Schulz to allow Mendelson to make a documentary about Peanuts. While that documentary was unreleased at the time, it led to Mendelson producing decades of Peanuts specials. Who knows what would’ve happened without that documentary?
Besides, Mays himself has a rather impressive run of Peanuts strip mentions, starting in 1955 and going all the way to 1969.
(Someone must’ve made a list of real people mentioned in Peanuts. The number that survive is getting ever shorter.)
