“I pray for everyone on the field and if I miss a call or make a mistake, I pray for the strength to deal with it. God has taken care of me throughout my whole career, and He’s the reason I’m where I am today. — Lance Barksdale umpire. He had the skills, he had the experience, and the Barksdales began to allow themselves to imagine what it would be like when Lance got the call. “I could’ve named a thousand reasons why it would be life-changing and the paycheck would be the last thing on the list,” Barksdale says. “Moving to the Majors would mean a set schedule, four weeks of vacation during the season, and knowing my off days in advance. It would mean job security and benefits for my family. It would literally secure our future.” Then in 2004, the Major League games stopped coming. Other Minor League umpires – many with far less experience than Barksdale – were put in games ahead of him. All those years of struggling and separation appeared to be for nothing. For the first time in 15 years, Lance seriously considered leaving the game. But quitting posed its own set of problems. Close to 40 years old, Lance had never held a traditional job and wondered whether he had any marketable skills with which to support his family. “I saw all these other guys getting promoted and I couldn’t help thinking, ‘Why not me?’” Lance recalls. “But I realized I had no choice other than to put it in God’s hands. I told Him, ‘If this is what You want me to do, I’ll stay. I’ll stick it out at least until the end of this season. Just please let me know.’” Two months later, Barksdale found himself calling games in the Major Leagues again, his slump apparently over. In the spring of 2006, Lance Barksdale was notified that a Major League umpire had decided to leave the game, and that he was one of three Minor League umpires – all beacon
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with equal experience – being considered for the position. The decision would be made and the new Major League umpire would be notified on July 1. ennifer Barksdale still gets chill bumps when she remembers her encounter with Miss Pam, the security guard in Atlanta who told her God had plans to bless her family. “I had never experienced that before,” Jennifer says. “Someone had given me a word she had heard from God. For that whole game in Atlanta, I was a basket case.” But then, July 1 came and went with no word from the Major League. Lance Barksdale assumed one of the other candidates had been chosen. As the days passed, Jennifer, too, had to assume that once again, it simply was not Lance’s time. Barksdale tried to maintain a positive attitude, telling Jennifer, “it’s okay, we’ll get it next time,” before heading off to his next fill-in assignment in Tampa, Florida. He was still in Tampa on July 6, when Tom Leppard, Major League Baseball’s director of umpire administration, called with the news Lance Barksdale had waited 15 years and 2,300 baseball games to hear. “He said, ‘Lance, I know there are a lot of rumors going around, but you’re the man,’” Barksdale recalls. “I thought he was just giving me a pat on the back, consoling me because the job had gone to someone else. I said, ‘Well, thanks, I appreciate that,’ and he said, ‘No, Lance, I mean you are the man. You got the job.’”