[teebob21]

So I'll chime in with a non sequitur. I work (or have worked) for a bunch of different alphabet-soup organizations here in AZ. Basically everything except U-Trip. As an umpire, I treat them all basically the same but I can't speak for the umpire assignors. The first assignment I accept is the one I am doing that day...there are a few exceptions, such as when a higher-level college assignor wants to give me games on a date I've accepted low-level college games.

I get it that there is, for whatever reason, some ASA hate here. I don't pretend to understand it as so many of us started as ASA umpires. I owe ASA for nearly everything I have become as an umpire. Now, ASA has a set of mechanics that have been developed to be "workable" by umpires of all levels for games of all levels. Is it perfect? No. I understand that ASA mechanics can be silly and restrictive given higher levels of play, but when we, as independent contractors choose to work for a given organization, we work for the letters on our shirt whether we like their mechanics and/or rules or not. Additionally, some people have bad history with other people so there is some politics involved, but I don't, and won't, participate in that.

That said, and I haven't had to do this yet, I would not be willing to work again for an organization that did not assign me games when I was available simply because I sometimes worked for some other organization. The exception to this would be if I were on ASA (or other orgs) staff. We work for the betterment of ourselves and the betterment of the game. ...And our big-bucks $30 game fee.