Phthursday Musings: A Certified Locksmith

A bit of housekeeping up front…

If you didn’t read what I published Tuesday, please go back and read that instead of reading this. Or read this too! But what I wrote Tuesday was much better than this. Not that this isn’t good! It’s just occurred to me that if people get an email that says PHTHURSDAY MUSINGS they might be all on top of that, but when it’s a “normal” or “special” META-SPIEL, it might be a head shrug. Don’t head shrug! Those are the good ones!

Here’s what I wrote earlier this week:

I only have a couple ideas which have come up today:

When we moved to Brookfield a few years ago, I had some sort of idea that I would be involved in “local stuff”. Well, I got involved with the PTO, and I got to know some people, etc. And then the pandemic and the lockdown. And coaching and meeting more people. And so I’ve kind of gotten involved in “local stuff”.

But I think I thought I would kind of settle into involvement with “local politics” and that absolutely seems not to be happening. Which - maybe it will happen soon and I don’t know it! But I kind of find all of the basic local government stuff only a little interesting and I haven’t really tried to engage most of it and haven’t really made much of an attempt to connect with people “into politics” locally and… is this weird? Is this a side effect of being a little older? A side effect of the pandemic somehow? A side effect of where I live? A side effect of the intensity of work?

I’d be really interested in what other people think, people who were kind of politics adjacent and then just kind of faded away from it.

I’ve touched on this sort of stuff in the past. I think it’s just really weird how… distanced I feel from some of the stuff I didn’t think I’d be distanced from.

I’ve also written in the past about the PosCast (which is a podcast) featuring sportswriter Joe Posnanski and television writer Michael Schur. Here’s Joe’s Substack.

Mike recently discovered that you could just buy boxes of unopened baseball card packs from 40 years ago… so he did. And they’ve been opening packs on the PosCast and commenting on all these random dudes whose cards they pull out. It’s wonderful.

As it so happens, I’ve been planning to do something very similar, just not with baseball cards. Or with a podcast. Which is kind of the problem: Without benefit of a podcast, how exactly would I introduce something unexpected and then chat about it when it’s just me writing? How can I take a medium like this and stretch its limits?

To such end I will need some feedback from readers. What I am especially interested in is, when I have shared images of baseball cards, have they just completely overwhelmed the flow of reading? Have I made the images too large? Imagine if I were going to open a pack of baseball cards and comment on five random cards… would it work best to share an image of the card in line and then write about it, or would it be more interesting or maybe just more conducive to the medium to not even share the card? If I were to experiment with different ideas, would more than four people be interested?

Depending on the feedback… I may have a ver ver special META-SPIEL coming up in the near future.

I’m going to riff off of the PosCast a little bit here because of one of the more ridiculous cards Joe Posnanski pulled out. This is #413 from the 1987 Topps set, for Oakland A’s pitcher Moose Haas:

1987, I was 10 years old when the set arrived, we’re talking prime baseball card years. But darn it, that wood grain was dumb. It’s kind of fun in retrospect but back then it was just kind of dumb. Topps was always easier to find but I think between this and the so-awful-they-were-kind-of-great 1986 set, Topps really ceded the mantle of most desired cards to Donruss. It’s not just the wood grain, it’s also… that font is awful, you know it, I know it, even Dan Gilbert knows it.

A lot of cards back then were like this. This is not an action shot. There’s nobody in the stands, that’s not an actual game uniform, it’s a sideways view. We’re not even getting the full effect of his excellent moustache!

Well, Joe also read the back of the card. Now I’m a Moose Haas partisan, since he was a member of my all-time favorite single season team, the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers, and is also famous / infamous in my house for his role in a most excellent Snapchat filter session involving my wife attempting to ask a question about a fruit that’s used like a vegetable. But I digress. Read the “facts” portion of this:

Moose Haas, as of 1987, had a Black Belt in Taw Kwon Do… was an amateur magician… and a certified locksmith.

I found all of this verified in a 1985 UPI story in which Brewers manager George Bamberger said of him:

“He's a very quiet kid, a real gentleman. He doesn't say much. He doesn't say anything, in fact.”

Moose Haas could show up to your house, unlock your door, do a card trick, and kick your ass, all without saying a word. Incredible.

And they couldn’t get a better picture of the guy?

I’ll close this week with a photo I took last week. I got a couple similar photos, and they’re among the favorites I ever got at a rock show. The legendary Archers of Loaf were at the Bottom Lounge on Friday night, and during the intro guitar line to “Revenge”, that’s Eric Bachman on the left, Matt Gentling on the right reveling in the moment, and the light hitting it all just so:

If the Archers are coming anywhere near you, make sure you see them!