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I am the UIC for our local little league and I have to admit that the conclusions drawn so far are true. While there is a baseline level of competency necessary to be selected to tournament games, it is by no means a question of who is the best umpire. My experience has been that it is extremely political as I have seen excellent umpires passed over year after year in favor of better connected ones.
The big issue in my mind is that I do not see anyone trying to institute and manage any kind of a quantitative system to rate umpires based on their performance. Coming from the business world, when I first started umpiring this was one of the first things that I asked about, and was told that there was no formal process. As best as I can tell, the only measure of any kind is word of mouth and maybe some half hearted attempts at getting feedback from coaches.
There is an old adage in business that what you measure will improve, you just have to make sure that you are measuring the right thing. Seems to me that LL umpiring could stand some standards and some measurement.
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David A. Brand
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