Richard's Poor Almanac by Richard Thompson for May 28, 2018

Technically speaking, Violet didn’t pull the ball away. She was afraid Charlie would kick her hand, flinched, and the ball fell just before he kicked at it.

https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/1951/11/14

Fun Fact: On the very last Football Gag (Schulz did it every year, but only once per year), it is left for the reader to decide whether or not Charlie Brown got to kick the football. Lucy was called away by her mother, and left Rerun to hold the football. Afterwards, Lucy asks her brother whether or not he pulled the football away, and Rerun looks at her smugly and says “I’ll never tell” (Lucy’s reply: “*AAUUGGHHH!!!”*).

It was the perfect choice, I think. Over the years many people pleaded that just once they wanted to see Charlie Brown kick the football, but Schulz believed the point of the gag was never the suspense over whether or not he’d succeed but in Lucy’s inventiveness (ultimately Schulz’s inventiveness, of course) in getting away with it. If Charlie Brown ever succeeded, he’d have to retire the gag. That last year, Schulz KNEW it was going to be the last, so he COULD have had Charlie Brown kick the football with no risk, but he was rarely one to take the sentimental option, fan service for the sake of fan service. (Of course, after Schulz’s death the tribute cartoons often featured Charlie Brown kicking the football, up in heaven if need be (despite the implication that the child Charlie Brown died when the old man Sparky Schulz died), but eulogies are pretty much sentimental by nature, which is why tribute cartoons are rarely funny in their own right.)

Sums it all up pretty well. I always felt sorry for Violet and Shermy and others who got pushed aside….