Kennedy: Veteran Bob Moses calls him as he sees them -- all year round

Umpire Bob Moses searches his car for an umpire’s hat minutes before an October game. Photo: Patrick Kennedy.

November 9, 2025

Double play: Kingston official Moses still calling strikes, penalties at 67 years young

By Patrick Kennedy

Canadian Baseball Network

It’s a warm, sun-dappled October afternoon at Megaffin Park, a few minutes before the first pitch in an exhibition ball game featuring U15 teams from Kingston and Montreal.

In the parking lot, umpire Bob Moses rummages through the clutter in the trunk of his 2012 Hyundai.

He’s searching for a hat to complete the ensemble he’ll don for the next couple of hours. Moses is working the bases today with colleague Pat Jordan behind the plate.

The late-autumn game wraps up another season at Nels Megaffin’s aging ballpark — and Year 32 for the mustachioed Moses as a member of the local umpiring lodge. Yet, he’ll have little time to reflect and relax. Not long after the final out is registered, he’ll switch his counter, mask and umpire shirt for a whistle, helmet and black-and-white striped jersey.

“I have to referee a hockey game tonight,” he says, sliding the located umpire lid atop a thatch of grey hair.

At age 67, Moses is still slim and trim, an official for all seasons.

“I’ve probably umpired around 4,000 ball games and refereed under 9,000 hockey games,” says Moses, who’s been officiating the puck game for 41 years.

The chance to earn a bit of extra cash is always an incentive for Moses and other amateur officials, but Bob will tell you what keeps him in the game year after year is something else.

“I like what I do, and I love sports,” says Moses, who traces his ingrained passion for sports to his little league baseball coaches Charlie Pester, Phil Marshall, Bob Gilmour and Bob Elliott Jr. “All four are in our local sports hall of fame. I couldn’t have had it any better.”

From a refereeing standpoint, the grandfather of two mentions long-time on-ice official Hank Kelly as “my biggest mentor,” noting that Kelly taught him “and dozens of other young referees how to conduct yourself in a professional manner.”

Kelly, who officiated minor, senior and collegiate hockey for 30 years, recalls Moses as someone who wasn’t intimidated by crucial moments in close games.

“Bob wasn’t afraid to make the tough call, no matter the situation, or at what point in the game” says the 82-year-old Kelly, who in 1982 co-founded the Kingston Hockey Referees Association with Norm Ball and Marshall. “If Bob saw a penalty, he’d call it. That earned him the respect of coaches and players alike.

“As a hockey official, you try to treat disrespect with respect,” reasoned Kelly. “Hockey’s an emotional game and coaches and players are bound to get worked up at times. But you can’t let your emotions match theirs, and because Bob is such a low-key individual, that was never a problem for him.”

What was a problem — or at the very least a vexing habit — was Moses’ propensity to show up for games with only minutes to spare. He was a ‘Bobby-come-late’ to the rink or at the ballpark.

When the topic is broached, Moses offers a ‘guilty-as-charged’ chuckle.

“That habit stems from my hockey playing days,” says the former Kingston Voyageur who in the mid-’70s won a Centennial Cup with the junior tier II Rockland Nationals. “I always hated getting to the rink early, so I just showed up with enough time to throw on my equipment. The habit carried over when I started refereeing and umpiring.”

Yours truly can attest to that. Over the years I umpired numerous senior and men’s league ball games with Bob, who possessed a sound knowledge of the rules. As game time approached, many times I’d see coaches scour the grounds and wonder aloud, “Where’s the other ump?” Moments later Bob would come strolling across the Megaffin parking lot like one of author W.P. Kinsella’s ghost players emerging from an Iowa cornfield.

Umpiring ball games or refereeing hockey games is not a job for the faint of heart. Injuries occur, and not just from foul ticks and flying pucks, though there are plenty of them. Moses has suffered broken ribs, a torn Achilles tendon, a dislocated shoulder, and more bumps and bruises than he can remember. He once spent a week in hospital with a punctured lung after a nasty fall on the ice.

Like all veteran refs, he’s also worked games when all hell broke loose, like the time a bench-clearing brawl erupted during a North Frontenac Men’s League game. Or the time a St. Lawrence College player picked up referee Moses and body-slammed him to the ice.

“That was the last hockey game St. Lawrence College ever played,” Bob points out. “They canceled the hockey program after that happened.”

Violence against game officials is nothing new, and Bob’s recollection of the body-slam incident brings to mind an umpire from back in my ‘Good Ol’ Days who could — and often would — turn the tables on an attacker. I speak of the late Thomas “Bucky” Davis, a muscular magistrate of the diamond who bellowed balls and strikes with unquestioned authority for nearly two decades on ball fields in and around Kingston.

I recall how in a 1990 interview, Bucky — who was ever the colorful raspy-voiced raconteur — recounted two of my favourite umpire stories. The first one took place BEFORE a fiery fastball playoff game in Sharbot Lake. Bucky sensed trouble early on “when the other umpire took off his glasses and took out his false teeth before the game started.

“A bunch of fans had it in for the Sharbot Lake coach,” he recalled. “They came out of the stands and beat the living crap right outta him. The whole thing turned into a complete riot. One woman bit me on the shoulder. I ended up breaking it all up with a baseball bat and blood pouring out of me.”

The second incident occurred at a game in Parham. “I called a third strike and Junior Goodberry came flying off the bench to get at me. He took three swings at me, so I hauled off and drilled him three times with my mask, knocked him flatter than a pancake.”

Moses doesn’t anticipate any such high-octane disruptions as he starts his 42nd season as a hockey zebra. Ditto for next spring when he’ll commence Year 33 as an umpire. Nor will he ever again attempt the type of exhausting schedule that in the past, even as a much younger man, left him as flatter than Junior Goodberry.

“I once worked an old-timers’ hockey tournament alone in Syracuse,” he recalls. “I refereed nine games in one day including seven in a row. And at a fastball tournament in Grafton where a couple of umps didn’t show up, I umpired six games in one day.”

Only his fellow game officials can attest to the intense fatigue factor attached to such a workload.

Next summer, if you’re taking in a ballgame at Megaffin Park and only one ump is on the scene minutes before the scheduled first pitch, scan the parking lot and look for “Old Man Moses.” He’ll be along directly.

Patrick Kennedy is a retired Whig-Standard reporter. He can be reached at pjckennedy35@gmail.com