On Moonlighting ...

Last Sunday after teaching a class on Isaac and Ishmael at my church a woman came up to me and said, "I heard you were moonlighting yesterday!"

      "Well, that depends where you saw me!" I said.

      "My grandson had a baseball game in a tournament and you were one of the umpires," she explained.

      "Yep, that was me." I replied. "And my son Steven was the other umpire."

      I wanted to ask if she thought we did a good job but I decided not to in case we blew a call or two!

     Yes, I moonlight (I like that word). When I am not teaching about Jews and Muslims or writing funding proposals for the Isaac-Ishmael Initiative or mentoring via Skype, I umpire baseball.

      And I really love it, for a lot of reasons. I like working with Steven, who is a very good umpire. I like baseball a lot, I like interacting with coaches, players, and even fans (although the crazed parent who screams all game wears thin on me).

      This is the beginning of about four months of umpiring a ton of baseball games for Steven and me. We will do tournaments just about every weekend through 4th of July weekend culminating with Colorado State competition. Most weekday evenings in April through June we will have Jefferson county youth league games. It's crazy busy, a fair amount of work, and loads of fun being on baseball diamond every day.

      So next time you yell at a ref or umpire at a sporting event think of me and be a bit kind! We're just human too!