Well, yeah ... :D

Harry Hunter Wendelstedt, Jr., has been retired since following '98. His son, Harry Hunter Wendelstedt III, was among the 25 new hires to the full-time staff after the whole '99 debacle. The younger Wendelstedt goes by his middle name to avoid confusion, yet, still honors his father by wearing his old uniform #.

It must be perfectly acceptable to worship MLB umpires here, just don't mention ever having worked with any, drop their names, or have one as an instructor in your association, or you get a beat down.;)

Did Nelson take over for Brinkman? Brink did retire right??

I heard this afternoon that Ed Hickox and Tom Hallion were re-hired full time as of today.

Brinkman retired. Bob Davidson "took over" or, better put, was promoted in Brinkman's place. Jeff Nelson has been an MLB umpire for 9 years and has done 1 WS, 2 LCS and mulitple division series.

Spring Training
 

I've been following things very closely, thanks to the Spring Training Box Scores located at MLB.com (e.g., who's worked where {both city and base}, on what day, etc.), and, as of the conclusion of games on Wednesday, March 7, 2007, I've been unable to place the following 7 umpires as having made their Spring Training debuts to this point:

Derryl Cousins
Mike DiMuro
Mike Reilly
Mike Winters
Tim McClelland
Andy Fletcher
Brian Runge

Anyone with any knowledge of an update on the status of these guys, who could pass such information on to the rest of us, would be greatly appreciated.

By the way, anyone interested in the file I've been meticulously maintaining, IM, e-mail, or PM me, and I'll be happy to pass it along to you. Just make sure that you're clear about your e-mail address when and/or how ever you choose to (or not to) contact me. The reason I say this is because, all I'm going to wind up doing, is sending it to you as an e-mail attachment.

Thats what we do. We all sit around tracking what umpires have worked spring training games. This post makes your previous polls look like gold.

They are probably in the Umpire Protection Program to avoid Internet stalkers.

HA ! :D