by Ron Kaplan
NJJN Features Editor

February 14, 2008

As a baseball umpire, Josh Miller calls ’em as he sees ’em. So it wasn’t out of character for the East Windsor native to speak out against Baseball Chapel, an evangelical Christian organization that supplies volunteer chaplains to major and minor league teams to lead weekly prayer meetings.

In the major leagues, these visits usually take place in multi-purpose rooms set apart from the rest of the players’ areas. In the minors, especially at the lower levels where Miller worked, such accommodations are rare; the groups gather wherever they can find space, even if it means inconveniencing those who do not wish to participate.

Including umpires.

Especially the ones who happen to be Jewish.

“Nobody ever considers the umpires,” Miller told NJ Jewish News in a telephone interview from his home in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. “We’re just an afterthought.”

The first time Miller was approached by a Baseball Chapel representative, “I couldn’t believe it. I thought it was a joke that someone would come into the umpires’ room before the game to preach. I thought he was an employee of the team.”

The chaplain handed him a pamphlet with the message of the week written in English and Spanish and invited Miller and his umpiring partner to join him in Christian prayer.

This routine would be replayed every week and Miller’s fellow arbiters seemed to like it.

“They’re very friendly guys, for the most part. And the umpires don’t have too many friends on the road, so it’s always nice to have a friendly face come in.”

One year he was teamed up with another Jewish umpire. Perhaps it was that kinship that allowed them to stand together to say they weren’t interested when asked to join in prayer. With his non-Jewish partners, “if one of them said yes, that was it, you didn’t have a choice. Umpiring is like the military when it comes to seniority. If the other umpire was older or had more seniority, you had to allow [the chaplain] to come in. In one year I had seniority, but the other umpire was very religious, so I didn’t want to [deprive] him of his rights.”

Miller said he would try to leave the room if he had the chance. “There will be times when they build a [minor league] stadium and just forget to build an umpires’ room...and after the fact they’ll have to make room somewhere.” Generally, though, Miller would try to distract himself by stretching or preparing baseballs for the game, “but it would throw off your routine. You’d see them talking about something you have no belief in while you’re trying to get mentally prepared.”

He recalled one situation at a ballpark in North Carolina.

“The umpires’ room was a shed in left field. If I left that shed, I’m in 100-degree heat and I don’t need to be standing out in 100-degree heat any longer than [necessary].”

After his initial encounter with Baseball Chapel, Miller decided to do some more research. It was while conducting an on-line search that he found an article by Rabbi Ari Sunshine in Washington Jewish Week, decrying the attitude of the Chapel when it came to non-Christians. In one case, an athlete was told that his girlfriend was going to hell because she was Jewish.

“I wish I had found that earlier,” Miller said. “I didn’t know it was such a big deal and it was infringing on my rights.”

Sunshine had contacted baseball commissioner Bud Selig about the Chapel. Selig, who is also Jewish, promised to look into the situation, but after several months of inaction — and another letter from Sunshine — said he would leave any decisions up to the individual teams.

After the 2007 season, Miller — who is sometimes mistaken for Livingston native Josh Miller, the former NFL punter — was released from his contract, a standard practice for umpires who do not advance through the minors in a timely manner. He didn’t want to bring up his discomfort with Chapel for fear of repercussions. “There are only 245 or so minor league umpires and there’s only 68 major league umpires who don’t leave until they retire. There are so few spots that they basically look for reasons to get rid of you. So I thought that if this is something that I brought up, they would hold it against me.”

Miller, 31, will continue to umpire on the college level. He’s also putting his degree in finance from the University of Florida to use as he produces a TV program about retirement and financial issues for baby boomers for PBS; during his off-seasons, Miller worked in the banking industry.

Miller, whose father was raised in an Orthodox household, said it was simply a matter of consideration.

“If I was just working in an office and every [week] they had a preacher come in and you had to listen to them preach, I don’t think it would be fair. There’s no baseball ‘temple.’ There’s no other religion that’s focused on. How baseball continues to do it, I just don’t understand.”

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