You work in baseball? You’re so lucky.

You work in baseball you hear that 100 times a week, minimum.

Bear Goodell works in baseball. He’s the promotions director for the Kansas City T-Bones. Consider how lucky he was on one particularly chilly February afternoon. He was in his dress slacks and shirt, standing in a flooded elevator shaft, removing the water, bucket by bucket. Oh well, at least he wasn’t getting paid at the time as an intern.

“Good times,” Goodell said, looking back on the experience. “Bucket brigade with the groundskeeper and the other operations guy. We got it taken care of.”

Goodell, in his second season with the T-Bones, now draws a paycheck. He’s been living in midtown Kansas City since January, his first address outside of Lawrence. Goodell, 26, is a graduate of Lawrence High and Kansas University.

“I played baseball very poorly at Lawrence High,” Goodell said. “Second baseman. Got cut my senior year. Never made it to the varsity.”

He sells better than he played.

Tonight is Moon Night at CommunityAmerica Ballpark, one of many ideas Goodell has generated to try to put more people in the seats. Harrison Schmitt, the 12th and most recent person to walk on the moon, will throw out the first pitch.

How did Goodell line him up and how much does he have to pay him? Goodell went to the NASA website, e-mailed a random name, and used that as a starting point to send letters to the nine surviving astronauts who walked on the moon. He said “four or five” contacted him to let him know they weren’t interested. A former U.S. senator, Schmitt accepted the invitation. The T-Bones are picking up the flight and the hotel and Schmitt, 72, did not ask for anything more than that, Goodell said.

Authors love plugging their books, and Schmitt will have a chance to pitch “Return to the Moon” and the ceremonial first ball.

Not all the theme nights bring as much class to the table as Schmitt, and that’s by design.

Recently, the T-Bones had “Redneck Weekend.”

“Friday was Mullet Night,” Goodell said. “Saturday was Redneck Wine and Cheese Night. Boxed wine. Twinkies. Spray cheese and crackers. The public is priced out of so many of the fundraisers in Kansas City. Ours are affordable, and we benefit different charities like the American Cancer Society, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, the Kansas City Cancer Center.”

During Redneck Weekend, the ballplayers wore sleeveless jerseys and used Sharpies to draw tattoos on each other.

Not all promotions have gone as well.

“The worst I’ve seen was when we were doing some sort of a Twinkie-eating contest on top of the dugouts last year,” Goodell said. “One of the contestants started choking and had to get the old Heimlich maneuver in front of 7,000 people on a Saturday night. I vowed never to do any sort of eating or drinking contest again.”

Goodell stopped promoting the ballpark for just a second to promote himself.

“Can you put in there that I’m single?” he asked.

Yes.

“Can you put that I’m handsome, too?” he pushed.

No.