Turnback of Games

[PeteBooth]

As the Winter approaches, there's not much to talk about these days so I'd thought I'd continue on our current topic of Assignors.

In one of the responses I received, it was told to me that I should treat taking game assignments as if I had a part time job. I agree with that philosophy except:

Whenever I took a part time job for a variety of reasons, my employer paid me by the hour. Whenever, we take a game assignment we get say a $50 game FEE whether we are there for 5 minutes or 5 hours - it doesn't matter.

In my area the varsity FEE is $80.00 and the Modified FEE is $54.00. While it can be said that an assignor needs his most qulaified individuals on a varsity game the fact remains that on average most good varsity games are completed in less than 2 hours.

The same cannot be said for the modified level. Yes, you get that occassional gem but by and large the modified games last longer except if there is a time limit on the field.

Ok what's my point in all this. I'll use a mathmatical term if you will.

The Turnback of games is Directly proportional to the quality of the Game itself

In my rookie season my availability (becasue of my job at the time) was adequate. Plenty of times I would get that last minute call "Pete can you go so and so" for me.

I got many assignments that way and thought that the association thought I was the next coming of Steve Palermo (Remember I was a rookie and didn't know the ropes yet). Little did I know at the time that the only reason I was getting all those games is because they were originally turned back by someone else.

Also, in general much travel time involved and the qulaity of the game stunk.

In conclusion, if Umpires got paid by the hour perhaps there wouldn't be so many turnback of games. As mentioned one gets a real good game FEE at the vasrsity level where the games last on average less than 2 hours vs. modified games in which you receive $25 less but are there for at least an hour or more on average.

For those of you who assign, is the main reason for turnback of games due to the quality or am I way off base (No pun intended) Thanks

Pete Booth