Then don't take it especially to satisfy your need for $30 dinners and post game booze. Go to McDonald's and drink less. It's called moderation.

Plenty and I quit taking game fees years ago. I teach for free internationally on my dime. I collect umpire's equipment and give it away to international umpires in need either for free or they pay the cost of shipping. Tens of thousands of $$$ every year.

IOW, I walk the walk.

When I worked for fees, I did it because I was very happy to have either the extra income or income to keep the doors open in the Best's household. I was never once ashamed of my officiating profession or ashemaed to admit that I need to work games for the security and comfort of my family.

It is absolutely hypocritical to not lay straight your need for the money, admit it and move on. There's no shame in that yet where are the ones on this forum who are not ashamed to admit it? At this point, not one person except for myslef has done so. What are the chances that the hundreds of umpires on TOF, posting here, that none, zero, of them don't need the income?

Strange? Not around here where forum talk is the talk and the walk is nonexistent.

That's because they made you stop umpiring years ago.

Maybe, but not umpiring.

Great! I've got some. Why don't you PM your name and address so I can send it to you?

Just like Christopher Reeve.

There's a difference between umpiring solely for the money and umpiring because it's a hobby you enjoy that also pays.

If given a choice between 8, 1.5 hour time limit, 9U games on a Saturday in your home town @ $30, and 1 D-2 game , 1.5 hours away @$125, most "umpires only for the money) would take the former; most others would take the latter.

Most (and there are exceptions, on both sides) who do it only for the money show up just before game time, leave immediately after, don't study the rules or mechanics, wear old wrinkled / dirty clothes, etc. They often are the Smittys.

I, too, know umpires who umpire for the money and who don't fall into that description. That wasn't (I am quite certain) what Rich was talking about. I'm also quite certain that posters who pretend not to understand that actually do.