Are we having fun yet....

[Snorg]

When I first posted on this board, I mentioned that my knees were the reason I had to get out of umpiring, but that was only a half-truth. I used my knees as the final excuse (they are in pretty bad shape).....but ultimately the real reason was that I simply was not having fun anymore. Now please believe me when I say it had nothing to do with the chirping, disagreements, or any other consequences of my calls -- that's an occupational hazard that I fully accepted, and relished. It came down to the fact that, almost without exception, the players (16-18 yrs old, summer ball) and coaches of virtually every team had very little, if any, respect for the game of baseball itself. Call me a purist, but I got tired of games where there were more errors than runs scored....more errors than hits....players laughing or yelling at each other over errors....players that could not have cared less if their team won or lost (it seemed like they didn't want to be there)....coaches that were basically babysitters, with no intention of teaching or coaching.....etc. And these occurances were the rule, not the exception.
It also didn't help that most of the umpires in the association that I was in were 'veterans' with 20+ years of experience, whose idea of a pre-game conference was to walk in the gate and, without breaking stride, walk onto the field while telling me "I've got both lines the whole way". And that pains me because I thoroughly enjoy umpiring, and I thoroughly enjoy doing it right (positioning, mechanics, appearance, etc). I just got to the point where I got tired of beating my head against the wall, and I didn't want to do it any more.

I apologize for the length of this post, and for my rant.........the real reason I started this thread was just to ask.....
Overall, do you have fun umpiring? Is the money you make an important factor? Based on some of the recent threads, some of you travel a long way to umpire......I was just curious what you get out of it.

Thanks for any responses.