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Transcript:

Charlie Brown stands on the mound and goes to pitch the ball.

He throws a very feeble ball.

The ball rolls to Patty who is ready to swing at it with her bat. Shermy and Schroeder stand behind the plate.

The ball stops right in front of her, and Shermy calls, "Ball One!!"

Original comic:

Can someone explain this to us non-Americans?

In baseball, a pitch has to go through the strike zone:

If the pitcher doesn't pitch well, and the batter doesn't attempt to swing at it, then it's called a "ball", and after enough of those the batter gets to go on base as if they had successfully hit the ball. The humor here is that the pitch is so poor that it doesn't even reach the strike zone. Normally, balls are called because they're just outside of the strike zone, not because they failed to reach it entirely.

There might be the additional joke of the kids playing a modified game where the strike zone extends all the way to the ground so that a strike would happen if the ball rolled over the plate on the ground, unlike in normal baseball. Patty looks ready to swing at the ball if it does reach the plate. In normal baseball, if it came rolling in, you wouldn't bother worrying about if it was a valid pitch.

Thanks.