[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by SanDiegoSteve

You would be hard pressed to find an area of the country who takes baseball any more seriously than they do where I live, and anywhere in the SoCal region. It's more of a religion out here, worshipped nearly year-round, when most parts of the country are in hiebernation already. We take our baseball as seriously as Texas takes their HS football. And that, brother, is very seriously indeed.

And the point is, the umpire I'm talking about didn't just "happen" to get D-1 assignments. Back in the day, being a D-1 umpire was really not that big of a deal, and nobody cared what an umpire looked like. That is a more recent phenomenon. Now it's all about how purty the umpire looks, not whether or not he can umpire a friggin' tiddlywinks contest, which is how I equate many of the D-1 umpires I've seen lately. He was assigned good games because he was a good umpire all around, and was well respected by coaches and administrators everywhere.

The bottom line is that somewhere is not making that big of a deal over a ponytail. And I think it really comes down to the competition for slots and in my area just to use it as an example, there are far less fewer slots in baseball than the other major sports. And if you live in a similar place I am sure there are people that will get opportunities in one place that would not get them in other places. And when it comes to baseball, there are first year umpires working varsity games and I even worked college games my first year because not everyone is available to work those games or willing to work those games.

Peace