Bruce Was Boss

Remembering MLB umpire Bruce Froemming

We were strangers in a strange—and more than a just a little musty—land.

My brother-in-law and I were walking through the bowels of hallowed Wrigley Field after a Cubs game decades ago. We’d just watched the local club cavort (forgot who won) and were in the less-than-friendly part of the Friendly Confines, that being a beneath-the-seats corridor leading to the umpire’s dressing room. The in-law and I were both Cub fans back then—the beloved Brewers were still in the American League, so I’d retained Chicago’s north side aggregation as my Senior Circuit favorite, having grown up on the Cubs in the Milwaukee pro baseball desert that was the mid and late 1960’s after the Braves had left and before Seattle’s Pilots got rebranded as the Brew Crew.

So why were we looking for umpires?

We didn’t have a beef with a call, but instead a thank you to give to one Bruce Froemming, the long time MLB arbiter and Milwaukee native who’d I’d met previously on several charity occasions. Bruce was generous with his time as well as with his stories, which he would share with little prompting. He was also generous with tickets—he’d given me his number and told me to shoot him a call when his crew was in Chicago, promising seats and a post-game meet up. The ducats were at Will Call as pledged with a note to come down to the dressing room after the final out. There we were, nervously wondering what would come next after our timid knock at the door. Would we get yelled at (or worse) for daring to approach the umpire’s sacred space? Would Bruce blow us off?

An attendant opened it a crack or so—no more—and asked tersely what we wanted.

“Bruce Froemming told us to drop by,” I think I eeked out, waiting for the guy to either tell me to get bent or slam said door in my face.

The dude turned away, his space soon filled by a lot of moist pink flesh, partially wrapped in a white towel, all of it topped with Bruce’s smiling face. Hands were vigorously pumped as introductions were made, and post-game banter ensued. As I recall, we asked if we could buy him a thank-you beer or three at the Wrigleyville haunt of his choice but he begged off, saying he was headed out to the airport to catch a flight to his next appointed series.

(That’s Bruce on the far right, watching then-Cubs skipper Lou Piniella audition for a punting job with the hometown Bears)

Umps don’t have home games, but I think that was maybe the only part of his job that Bruce didn’t love—that, and the fact that he couldn’t do it in his hometown, at least until the Brewers hopped leagues in the late 1990’s. He was the definition of the guy who found something that he loved and that he got paid to do it, although he probably would’ve done it for free. Baseball became a passion early in Bruce’s life and, when he realized he couldn’t play it as a pro he did the next best thing.

He became an umpire.

A damn good one, too.

He worked more than 5100 games—the third most among the men in blue—plus five World Series and numerous playoff games. Bruce’s dream to work at County Stadium came true when he was on the field for the 1975 All Star Game. He was on the job for the first game at Miller Field where he would also call his career ending tilt in 2007. Along the way, he built a huge memorabilia collection, not to mention a trough of tales. As memory serves, some of his artifacts got destroyed in a flood at Bruce’s home. The stories? They remained intact. And hilarious.

During the off-season, Bruce would be out and about wherever a local charity needed a celebrity to help a cause and brighten a room. It was at one such event where I first met him. There’d be others, including a session at a fundraiser that had the inspired notion to offer their invited notables the comfort of a “green room” where folks could mingle before they had to appear and, if so inclined, have a complimentary cocktail, too.

I don’t remember the charity that evening but I know Bruce and I got really, really familiar with the bartender. Think “King Of The Hill” backyard fence/closing credits…

…where the people came and went throughout the evening, as if the whole world passed by as he and I held our places, talkin’ baseball.

While Bruce Froemming thoroughly enjoyed who he was and what he did, he never let it get in the way of what he was on the field to do: make what he thought was the right call, no matter the situation. Even on September 2nd, 1972 at Wrigley where Cubs pitcher Milt Pappas was on the mound, one out away from a perfect game. Bruce was behind the plate. The batter worked the count to 3-2. The wind-up came, and the pitch smacked the catcher’s glove as the crowd roared.

Bruce called it a ball. The perfect game was gone. Pappas still got his no-hitter. Bruce got endless grief.

Journal/Sentinel reporter J.R. Radcliffe unearthed this morsel as part of his tribute to Bruce this week: ‘“Pappas, the next day in the Chicago Sun-Times, he said: ‘I know the pitches were balls, but he could have given it to me.’” Froemming recalled for a story in 2016 after Pappas’ death. “So the next day I go to the ballpark, I’m besieged by the press. (Cubs announcer Lou) Boudreau asked if he could interview me. I said: ‘Sure.’ In the interview, he said: ‘You could have become famous. You could have become the 12th umpire in the history of the game to have a perfect game.’ I said to Boudreau: ‘Who was the 11th umpire?’ He said he didn’t know. I said: ‘That’s how famous I’d be.’”

Vintage Bruce Froemming. Made the tough call, because he thought it was the right one. Owned it afterward, too.

Fast forward to a warm fall night in St. Louis, Missouri. It’s 2011, and our Brewers were engaged in playoff baseball battle with the dreaded but certainly not feared Cardinals, their first face-to-face postseason entanglement since the 1982 World Series that turned most every Wisconsin baseball fan fiercely anti-Redbird, a distaste locals who lived through that Fall Classic have since passed on to their children. And grandkids.

My radio station thought it a good idea to send the morning show I hosted to the Gateway City to do our program from the Busch Stadium press box. I drove down the day before all by my lonesome, checking into my downtown digs late that afternoon. My plan was to have a cocktail and solo dinner at former Cardinal star/broadcaster Mike Shannon’s famous steakhouse, one with a reputation as a fine sports bar/eatery sometimes populated by players and others with jobs in the game. A little expensive but hey—it was on the company dime. I seldom if ever did anything requiring the filing of an expense report from the road, so I figured the front office would allow me a little largesse. The thought of a tasty filet served up in proper environs was top of mind as I drove through flatter-than-a-duck’s-instep Illinois before crossing over the Mississippi in the arch’s shadow.

Shannon’s may have had out of this world steaks and such but I can’t personally vouch for that. Hungry as I was, I veered over to the bar where I ordered a tasty scotch to whet my appetite. Other patrons started to fill the empty seats, one of them looking vaguely familiar.

Bruce Froemming was where dinner went to die that autumn night.

To see a familiar face that evening was a comfort. To have it be Bruce was a joy. And unlike the case at Wrigley oh-so-many years before, I was honored that he agreed to join me for a drink. Maybe two. There might’ve been a third. I don’t remember the actual count, or much of what we talked about that night. It was certainly all-baseball and no dinner. Much if not all of it was hilarious.

(You can still probably see my ass groove in the bar stool)

What I do remember is walking back to my hotel, thinking, a) how the hell am I going to wake up in time after staying out as late as I did and, b) how lousy will I feel when I do. I also thought about how lucky I was to have such a great job, one that allowed me to do what I love, to be at big events and to meet famous people who, on a few rare occasions, went on to become acquaintances.

Losing Bruce Froemming is sad but knowing he made a career out of doing what he loved to do—and did it so well for a long, long time—is a comfort. The mention of his name is a smile waiting to happen. Another one of the game’s greats is gone, an another local one who never forgot where he came from, who never dumped on Milwaukee no matter where success took him. A guy who remembered his roots and who excelled at his job—serious when the occasion called for it, funny as hell when it didn’t. Bruce Froemming was honest, passionate, endlessly funny and always one-of-us, no matter how much fame—or infamy his job brought him. Forever approachable. Always friendly.

Even when wearing just a towel.