[mbyron]

Some of you are missing the point.

Pro ball is a capitalist enterprise. The objective is to maximize profits. The owners do that by maximizing revenue and minimizing cost.

Labor - players, staff, groundskeepers, umpires, etc. - is a cost to be minimized. The owners will pay them all the minimum required to keep revenue up. The fact is that, given what MiLB now pays umpires, there are plenty of people who are willing to do the job.

From a capitalist perspective, then, there is NO REASON to pay them more. The product (pro ball) will NOT suffer greatly from less qualified umpires working the games. And, if I'm wrong about that, and revenues start to drop, then the owners will realize that they made a mistake and will start to pay more for quality umpires. But it's easy to overestimate our importance to the game of baseball.

Is the status quo a living wage? No. I don't know anyone who thinks it's decent or fair or livable. But in a genuinely free market there is NO SUCH THING as an unfair price: if I voluntarily and with full information accept the price (for my labor, or my product or whatever), then it is fair. And the MiLB umps have been accepting it for 10 years and more.

Of course, we don't live in a perfectly free market (which is a good thing). And the owners might have other reasons for wanting to please the umpires (though I doubt it). And, finally many people will find what I'm saying to be disturbing - that the concept of "price gouging" or "unfair price" is incoherent in free-market economics. Isn't capitalism supposed to be good?

Let's not be naive: the MiLB umps have little leverage, and a strike would likely spell the end of the current apprentice system.