[greymule]

I have umpired countless baseball, SP, FP, and modified pitch games over the past four decades. At the top levels, SP is extraordinary. The players are extremely talented and constantly push the boundaries. And very few umpires can handle those games. Sometimes you feel like a single cop who has pulled over a biker gang.

However, as for regular umpire assignments, I agree that most of the SP games are garbage. This area was once a hotbed of SP, but if you attend a game now you'll see a bunch of overweight guys crushing pitches with their hot bats and trotting from base to base while the defense throws the ball who knows where. As an assigner, I had to cover a SP game a couple of nights ago, and a bunch of guys I used to play with (I'm 58) clobbered their opponents by 19 runs in 4½ innings. Nobody broke a sweat. At least the game took only 57 minutes. Yes, garbage.

Of course, many of the rec league FP games are pretty weak, too. But the atmosphere is usually positive and fun (in stark contrast to SP), even if you sometimes have to show the batter where to stand and the offense is limited to 5 runs an inning. On the other hand, there are practically unlimited high-quality FP games for good umpires to do.

We know that high-level baseball requires a great deal from an umpire, but of all the game assignments in a season, for what percentage would the assigner say, "This game requires two excellent umpires"? Baseball also has a disadvantage in that so many of the games are long and slow and, frankly, boring. I hate to say that, since I've loved baseball forever. But I stopped by high school game the other day (two middling teams), and after a couple of innings I couldn't stand it any more. Why does it take 15 minutes for three batters to make outs?

So at their high levels, baseball, FP, and SP are all good games that require competent officials. Perhaps it's a matter of which sport offers the most good games in your area.