"Sometimes my friends ask me how I became a baseball umpire.
I tell them that I went to an informational meeting for prospective new umpires.
I went up to a veteran umpire, and asked him to give me one piece of advice about umpiring.
He said the most important thing about umpiring is communication.
So, taking this advice, I enrolled in a communications course at a local community college.
The professor was a strange old fellow. He told us that our first assignment was to put 10 marbles in our mouth and then give a speech. This would force us to concentrate on speaking clearly and carefully.
After we completed that assignment, we could take one marble out of our mouth for the next assignment.
This process continued.
When I lost all my marbles, I was ready to umpire!"
