[Tim C]

P.S. When a school from your area plays a school from outside your area, do the schools from outside your area ever complain about two of the three umpires being from the association which services the other school? If one of your schools is in the final, does the third umpire work the plate?

Very important question.

The Portland Baseball Umpires Association is the only umpire association in the State of Oregon that is deemed "neutral' by the Oregon School Activities Association.

That decision was established simply by the large number of umpires we have and the large number of schools we cover. It is rare that one of the selected umpires would have worked more than one or two games of a team from our area that makes the final.

Even though we were considered "neutral" for many, many years we were not getting to work the plate of the final game IF a school from our area was in the game. The Oregon Athletic Officials Associaiton corrected that issue and last year "Rei" became the first PBUA umpire in many years to work a plate game in the 6A Final (yes what I wrote is accurate - simply because of the number of schools we work a team from our area seems to ALWAYS make the final so were missing a plate final every year).

This year IF the defending State Champion team (from Medford, OR) makes the final then our third member of the crew (he's from the Medford Group) could not work the plate and one of the PBUA guys will get the plate assignment.

Hope this all makes sense.

Regards,