[PeteBooth]

Most of us work in the standard 2 person crew with the exception of year end HS sectionals, regionals or various tournaments.

I do not know about you, but I need a refresher come tournament time when either we have 3 or 4 person crews and my question - does it really make a difference?

In a 2 person crew, the one major drawback is determining catch / no catch especially when BU is in B or C because the BU can only go so far. The only time the BU goes out is when he /she is in "A" and the ball is hit right down the first base line.

The other drawback is determining whether a ball is a HR or a 2 base award, especially on fields where there are no fences or they have those portible type fences where it's sometimes difficult to tell whether ball actually went OVER or UNDER the fence.

However, in a MLB game they almost always have 4 (unless someone gets injured or sick during the game) and in the playoffs they have 6, yet there have been some miscues. Most recently the Giants / Diamonbacks game. We had the infamous HR that wasn't in a Yanks / Orioles playoff game.

The point I'm getting at is: Is it really necessary to have a 4 / 6 person crew for amateur sports, when most of us are accustomed to 2? Does the game really suffer? In a 2 person crew we are always hustling and when we work in a 3 / 4 person crew sometimes confusion arises becasue we are not used to it or we get a little lazy becasue it's the other umps call.

Last year during the LLWS, they had 6 umpires on a 60ft. diamond (which IMO is just plain rediculous) and there was a gross miscue by the umpiring crew concerning the missed base at second.

I do not have any statistics, but it seems to me that there are just as many miscues in a 4 to 6 person crew as there are with just 2 of us.

Don't want to start another thread on this issue, but at least at the major league level, it's time for baseball to get in line with the 21st Century and use instant replay for detrmining Fair / Foul on Home-runs or spectator interference when a fan reaches into the field of play.

What's your take?

Pete Booth