(FORTUNE Magazine) – Richard Johnson is on a roll. "We got one. One. Twenty-one bid offer at 22!... Hey, somebody says they can eat 36 night crawlers at Alcock's bar in two minutes. The odds are four to one. Anybody want in? Yuck... Twenty-two. Two..."

What's going on here? Imagine Phil Rizzuto trapped inside a Bloomberg terminal, and you've got Richard Johnson, the "squawker" for futures and options brokerage firm Sakura Dellsher at the Chicago Board of Trade's 30-year Treasury-bond futures pit.

Officially, Johnson's job is to report the futures price action into a PA system (or "squawk box") wired exclusively to Sakura Dellsher clients across the country. Sounds pretty boring. But not for Johnson. In between calling price movements, the 38-year-old erstwhile actor (a short-lived role on the CBS soap The Young and the Restless, plus bit parts in assorted movies) chats about everything from weather to sports to shark attacks. ("Shark attacks" occur when someone quietly sticks a piece of cardboard on the back collar of a new person, prompting others to shout, "Out of the pool! Shark!"... Hey, to the guys in the pit, that's humor.)

And clients seem to love it. As Stephen Smith, who trades Treasuries for Dain Rauscher, puts it, "Richard makes you feel like you're down there in the pit with him." Indeed, Tim Mulholland, Sakura Dellsher's COO, says Johnson is one reason the firm's trading volume on 30-year bond futures has picked up an average of 43% annually since he started squawking in 1996--because only Sakura clients have access to the squawk box.

Ironically, Johnson's boss, Sakura Dellsher CEO (and former Mercantile Exchange chairman) Leo Melamed, is pushing the Merc to move into electronic trading. That would seem to eliminate the need for jobs like Johnson's. After all, the less the open outcry auction is used, the less need there is for live human jobs. But COO Mulholland insists there will always be room for Johnson. "Richard can squawk off the screen," he says. And even make bytes sound interesting.

--Amy Kover