With replay review and 'robot umps,' who is still trying to become an MLB umpire?

MILWAUKEE — To baseball umpires, timing matters.

By the time registration opened at 8 a.m., more than 100 aspiring professional umpires had already arrived at the Milwaukee Brewers ballpark for Major League Baseball's one-day umpire camp.

These camps are, for a lucky few, the first step toward a career as an MLB umpire. A handful will be invited to a month-long development program in January, followed perhaps by a job in the minor leagues, then, hopefully, a plum Major League job.

In an era in which technology has encroached on every aspect of umpiring — replay review, near-daily lowlight videos of bad calls going viral, and now, MLB's automated-ball-strike system that calculates the location of a pitch to within a fraction of an inch — the pressure on umpires is higher than ever, MLB o