Quote:
Originally Posted by NCASAUmp
That reminds me of the time my dad gave me a warning for arguing balls and strikes. 
Sometimes, the exact opposite thing will happen when an umpire knows a team. One of the guys in our local crew used to play on one of the teams. When he stopped playing and started calling their games, they initially thought, "hey, we've got a man on the inside." Unfortunately for them, this umpire had the reputation of being even harder on his former teammates. Now, I've called a couple of those games with him, and I'm not sure just how much I believe it. However, that was the perception that people had of him.
I say that it's a bad idea to umpire games where conflicts of interest could arise. No matter what happens, you're screwed.
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Mine actually called a check swing on me on a very close one. I didn't say anything to dad at home, until my mom chirped in and asked him if he was 100% sure. He said 99.9%. He was a volunteer that night, heh.
My situation is that I was from a small town of 700-some people, and I was the only ASA-certified umpire in town for the few summers I lived there before moving to a big city. The coaches of all the teams were responsible for hiring umpires, and they really had a hard time getting people into our town to work because our ball organization paid crap for fees. Some of the umpires we had would travel 15-20 minutes only if it was guaranteed to be a doubleheader. That's how bad it was. I just had to walk across a couple backyards to get there.
But the big benefit was, once those umpires from the bigger towns came in to partner with me, word got back to those other towns and they were calling me to come and work games there when I wasn't working anything in my hometown. Even got to the point where I was traveling 30 minutes to do Legion baseball. Things were scarce back then. I don't know how much better they are now.