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Originally Posted by Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.

Mark, Jr., and I have, in Ohio, one H.S. baseball/softball assigner, and in Michigan, we have one H.S. baseball/softball assigner, one H.S. baseball assigner, and one H.S. softball assinger that use Arbiter; and Mark, Jr.'s women's college assigner uses Arbiter.

This weekend we upset our H.S. baseball assigner in Michigan. When we left home on Friday morning to officiate in the Ohio Special Olympics Basketball State Finals in New Philadelphia, Ohio (a three hour drive from our home), our Arbiter accounts showed that we were open on Monday, March 30th, which was accurate. During our drive commissioner of a conference in which we officiate basketball called me and wanted to know if Junior were open to umpire a varsity baseball game at a school in the conference on Monday (the school is a 65 mile drive from our home). He does not assign baseball but the school is in its first year and he was trying to help the school and he knew we umpired as a crew; we told him we would take the game.

We weren't going to get back home until Saturday evening and we really weren't to worried about getting an assignment for Monday on Aribter. BUT!! Wouldn't you know it, just a few minutes after 04:00pm both our cell phones go off telling us we have an assignment from our H.S. baseball assigner in Michigan. There is nothing we can do until we get home.

We get home and see that the assignment for a JV baseball DH on Monday at a school that is only 43 miles from home and the game fee is double of the game fee of the VAR game we agreed to cover. Oh well, that's life.

We declined the DH, and closed out our other assigners on that date. I then set the assigner an email explaining why we had declined the DH. He responded saying that he is now going to look foolish because he is going to have to tell the schools that they won't be able to play their DH because he has no umpires to umpire the game.

I have had situations where I have accepted a game and as I am logging into Arbiter to close out that date, the assigner has assigned me a game on that date.

Because I am the retired structural engineer, I am expected to be our family's social secretary, LOL! That means I am the one that really knows our officiating and umpiring schedules. My position is: Hey!! Doggie doo doo happens.

MTD, Sr.

If you have a smart phone you can access the full arbiter website by using the Internet browser on the phone.

That said, I expect a phone call for assignments that are less than 4 days away. I keep my arbiter up to date so almost always say yes, but I expect a certain level of professional courtesy. One exception is a college football conference I used to work. The expectation was crews would work every Saturday but we wouldn't know our location until a few days out.