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There's a couple ways we can look at Pete's statement: "ANYONE can umpire, however, not everyone can play shortstop for the NY Yankees."
First, taken your way, Pete would be comaring anyone off the street who is willing to give his best effort at umpiring with a professional baseball player with inordinate skill and years of training. Ridiculous.
Taken another way, Pete would be suggesting that ANYONE could make it through proschool, PBUC, short season A, long season A, Double A and Triple A and then take the field in the majors. That long road is littered with enough bodies of those who didn't make it to demonstrate that, this too, is ridiculous.
And lastly, (for the purposes of my post) is the possibility that no comparison, though made, was intended, and that, rather, Pete was saying 100% of the population (as in ANYONE) was capaable of becoming a competent "average" amateur umpire. As a trainer of youth and HS umpires, I personally know this to be patently fase. There are some people who just never "get it". There are some people, no matter how many clinics they attend, understand the concept of, or can perform proper mechanics. There are some people who have no concept of calling strikes, and I've seen some trainees who were so afraid of the ball that they backed out from behind the catcher on every pitch, even after four week ends of training and half a dozen game.
Taken at any level, and without consideration to whatever you believe my standards to be, the statment was ridiculous and certainly at least ties for the dumbest ever made on the internet.
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GB
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