[mattmets]

Originally Posted by kylejt

Plenty, (not really, maybe one) but you're missing the whole point.

Here's the problem, as I see it. It starts at the beginning. Want to be an MLB umpire? First you need to go to the five week school in Florida in January. If you have a job, you can kiss it goodbye, 'cause nobody can take a five week vacation. In college? Five weeks off in January kills your Spring semester. So now you've narrowed the pool of eligible candidates down, and not for the good.

So now you've got a group of guys that have been through the school, and made the cut. Congrats! Now get in your Toyota Tercel, eat at McDonalds, and sleep in endless La Quinta Inns for the next eight years. Now you're 28 years old, and have nothing to show for it. Well, unless one of the guys in THE SHOW either dies, or has some sort of amputation.

Then, if some sort of miracle happens, and you do get pulled up, you'd think you'd do everything possible to stay there. The money is FINALLY worth it (not really. Not going home for months on end can't justify that money to me), and you've MADE IT. Cool. But then you look around, see guys Cadillacing it, and getting their 30 years in. So what's their incentive to have the same crisp mechanics and hustle they had down in Rookie league? None. And that's the problem. They answer to no one.

Possible solution: Create a large pool of umpires from AA and up, and rotate them into MLB games. Instead of the same, tired souls you see day in and day out, you'd see a group of go getters. Make the pay decent, with a bonus for MLB games. Do a good job, you'll get asked back. Don't, and you won't. Then you get a bigger(better) group of folks willing to make this a career.

Just a thought.

And the odds of the union letting this happen are.....slightly less than my working an MLB game next week.

Part of the problem with sleeping in your Tercel after eating McDonald's in the La Quinta parking lot is that the AMLU and MiLB see umpires as completely different things. And until that changes, there will be a trickle-up effect as you mention above.