Schroeder (Peanuts) Schroeder (Peanuts) Schroeder is a fictional character in the long-running comic strip "Peanuts", created by Charles M. Schulz. He is distinguished by his precocious skill at playing the toy piano, as well as by his love of classical music and the composer Ludwig van Beethoven in particular. Schroeder is also the catcher on Charlie Brown's baseball team, though he is always seen walking back to the pitcher's mound with the baseball, never throwing it—admitting in one strip he did not want the other team to discover his lack of ability. He is also the object of the unrequited infatuation of
Schroeder (Peanuts) in 1965's "A Charlie Brown Christmas". Lucy asks Schroeder to play "Jingle Bells". Schroeder plays it in the style of a conventional piano, then manages to generate the warm tones of a Hammond organ, but Lucy cannot recognize the tune until the now-irritated Schroeder plays it, in a high register with one finger, in the tones of a normal toy piano. Until the France3 production, La bande de Snoopy, this was the only time in the history of the television specials that his toy piano ever actually sounded like a toy piano. In 1966's "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown",