[mcrowder]

May I congratulate those who have posted so far... this is the first thread remotely related to the strike that has been civil for this long. And it's a pleasure to read the reasoned, thought out responses, without the bitterness and namecalling attached to the rest of these threads.

I suspect a variant somewhere between what was mentioned above and where we were a year ago. I think that if a system develops where all umpires are local (which is possible), it won't take too long for the teams to realize just how home-slanted this may end up being. I think that even the very best umpires, if faced with 2 years of only umpire the home games for a specific team, could not avoid at least a small amount of bias, even if it's subconscious. And even if the bias is NOT there, the appearance of bias will be.

So eventually, if the strike breaks the union and umpires become contractors, SOME sort of travelling system would have to be born from this. It may even be that local leagues set the rules that allow them to be profitable and still rotate umpires (possibly VERY similar to what was in place a year ago), and simply say - if you want to work, these are the rules. If they find enough umpires willing to do this, then as far as the teams are concerned, the system will work. Quality may suffer, but until quality becomes a bigger issue to the teams than the bottom line, they will simply cope with it.

JMHO.