It was like no other year because there was talk about Milwaukee Brewer’s shortstop Pat Listach winning the rookie of the year and the Brewers had never had a rookie of the year before. It was still only August, 1992 but Brewers fans couldn’t help thinking back to first kisses and first drunk nights and in the case of Johnnie Raddle, a first homerun he hit over his little league fence. He was 48 years old when he hit it, yes 48 and no he wasn’t pretending to be Satchel Paige and play forever. He had hit one on a bounce to the fence when he was 12, but never over that fence so he recruited one of his roommates who they called the Squibbler because of a pasta dish he made and together they walked to Watertower Park and the Squibbler threw one pitch after another and Johnnie Raddle eventually hit one over the 200 foot fence and for the first time in his life he got to take that slow trot around the bases and ever since then, he started to buy people drinks at bar time.
Listach was hitting well above .250 and already had 45 stolen bases and doing whatever else it might take to win the rookie of the year prize. Johnnie Raddle and the Squibbler and three other tenants at 2345 North Nachman Avenue celebrated the Listach excitement by buying a cat and naming him Listach and it was that same day that Johnnie Raddle decided to switch gears in mid career course, surrendering his financial advisor job at the First Wisconsin building for a masters degree in physics at University Wisconsin Milwaukee, a ground level pursuit, to better understand how the universe works.
And that’s when they started to call Johnnie Raddle the Tinker Man because they knew he was gonna be poor after surrendering his big financial salary to become a student. They made jokes about him peddling on the avenue old pots and pans, yeh, the Tinker Man. He called for a group meeting and asked if he could squat in the attic for a nominal fee of 200 bucks a month.
No one complained because they could get the Tinker’s 200 for the attic which would give them an extra 200 to spend on beer and brewers tickets plus a new roommate which would make six of them.
The Tinker Man fixed up the attic nice and good too with a bed and a desk and a window
The new tenant Artie Hemlock didn’t say much and it seemed like he didn’t listen either because he often didn’t answer the other tenant’s questions and had a habit of fleeing rather suddenly in the middle of a conversation. But no one minded because he paid the rent and never complained about them making noise when the Brewers were on the west coast.
They later learned that Artie couldn’t hear out of one ear and his other one wasn’t so great either. He knew nothing about baseball so the Tinker Man took him to a game. The five of them typically sat in the bleachers because they were benches instead of assigned seats and so that’s where Artie and Tinker Man sat and Artie didn’t understand why the Tinker Man brought binoculars, but he didn’t mind either because seeing was what he did most on account of him not hearing so well.
The Tinker Man gave Artie the binoculars and told him to focus on the plate.
“Home plate,” he explained, “where the umpire and batter are. You see them standing there together, the umpire crouched a bit like he’s leaning on the catcher’s back.”
The Tinker Man looked over at Artie and his smile said it all. He had seen the catcher flashing signs towards the pitcher.
“Sign language,” he said.
And later in the game, The Tinker Man told Artie to aim the binoculars at the manager and then at the third base coach and then Listach took off and ran to second and stole the base and there was another smile on Artie’s face.
“More sign language,” he said.
It was later that same night that Artie asked if Listach the cat was named after Listach the rookie.
brewers baseball and things 