Working Alone.. one of those plays

[celebur]

Originally Posted by mbcrowder

Well... many self-respecting umpires wouldn't be caught dead working a league where they are set up to fail. So not only do you get just 1, you get 1 that can't or won't find work elsewhere. Not to say this means that all of your umpires are bad ... just means you're going to attract bad ones (or there will be no one there to make the bad ones better, at the very least).

A league that devalues the role of umpire this much is simply going to get what it pays for, I guess.

I would add that working a lot of solo games also leads to slower development of umpires. Being the lone wolf means you don't benefit from post-game discussions with your partner(s), and you don't make the connections you need within your association to learn what you should be learning.

Unless such an umpire is dedicated enough to work around this, or unless the evaluators within the association are keen enough to get out there and help such umpires along, doing a lot of solo games tends to develop umpires that are content to coast along where they're at.