in 1999 as part of a failed mass resignation during labor negotiations. Instead of furthering negotiations, the resignations backfired when baseball officials accepted the resignations and replaced the umpires with people who did not belong to the union. Reflecting on the resignations several years later, Davidson criticized the move orchestrated by umpire union executive Richie Phillips, saying, "I went from being cocky, to just being plain dumb, to realizing I'm lucky I have a job. What we did in 1999 was just asinine. We were victims of our own success. Phillips had always beaten baseball, but baseball had enough. They called our bluff. It was a huge wake-up call." During the baseball off-season and during his late 1990s hiatus from baseball, Davidson was a part-time talk show host for 850 KOA in Denver, the radio broadcast partner of the Colorado Rockies. Davidson said that he was not very good on talk radio, leading the station to dismiss him. He also umpired baseball at the collegiate level during the period after his resignation from the major leagues. In 2000, MLB officials negotiated with the dismissed umpires, agreeing to give Davidson and nine others their jobs back. However, the agreement was contingent upon Richie Phillips dropping his lawsuit against the league, and Phillips did not agree to do that. A December 2001 district court ruling upheld the terminations of Davidson and several other umpires. Return to umpiring Davidson was out of professional baseball until 2003, when he resumed umpiring in the minor leagues. His first minor-league assignment was in the Class A Northwest League. Davidson, who was making $160,000 per year in the major leagues, earned $1800 per month during the league's three-month season and he traveled by car between the league's baseball parks in the northwestern U.S and Canada. An article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer estimated that Davidson might work his way back to the major leagues by 2008. In December 2004, he and fellow resignees Tom Hallion and Ed Hickox were guaranteed three of the next five positions on the MLB umpire staff, with Davidson reportedly guaranteed the first vacancy. Davidson returned in 2007 to umpiring MLB games after Joe Brinkman retired. Brinkman said that he was glad to find that his spot went to Davidson, because he considered Davidson a friend. Number 31 was worn by umpire Mike Reilly in the American League (AL), and it was assigned to