‘Peanuts’ baseball special seems just a little off base

Charlie Brown as George Steinbrenner?

That’s the question you might pose after seeing the title of the new “Peanuts” special, “Lucy Must Be Traded, Charlie Brown.” And given the Machiavellian personnel changes contemplated by the blockheaded baseball impresario -- that’s Charlie, not George, by the way -- it’s worth considering.

Somewhere around his team’s 900th straight loss, and shortly after losing a game 53-0, Charlie pointedly concludes that “Lucy is driving me crazy. How can we get her off the team?” Indeed, he is tired of being a loser. (Detroit Tigers management, please take note.)

Could this really be the same boy who bought a Christmas tree because he felt sorry for how pathetic it looked? The same character who lamented how commercial the holidays had become?

Rest assured, Charlie has not totally lost his conscience. Nor is the program, which premieres on ABC tonight at 9, too hard-edged. In fact, it’s from more or less the same production team that turned the late Charles M. Schulz’s comic strips into the classic specials “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” and “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving.”

But something is different about this latest effort. The story line isn’t especially strong; it feels as if several loosely connected comic strips were strung together. The jokes seem more like vaudeville skits than anything plot-driven. And the moral at the end of this story manages to be ill-defined and predictable at the same time.

Maybe it’s in the timing. Whereas previous Charlie Brown specials were tied to holidays, this one marks the four-fifths-completed point of the baseball season. And yes, it is Labor Day weekend, but there’s only one joke about salary disputes during the entire half-hour.

Still, it’s hard to really dislike anything “Peanuts”-related. “Lucy Must Be Traded” isn’t a home run, but it’s a base hit.