Bruce Froemming: 37 years behind the mask: his long tenure as a major league umpire earned him respect and admiration while enduring many confrontations with managers, players and fans

Baseball Digest, May, 2008 by Phil Elderkin

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RECENTLY RETIRED MAJOR LEAGUE umpire Bruce Froemming, minus his mask and chest protector, radiated friendliness like an old fashioned pot-bellied stove. Grandfatherly even.

But once Froemming put on his uniform, he instantly became a Marine drill sergeant who had been issued a pair of boots one size too small while enjoying the authority of a hanging judge.

Yet, even as a rookie umpire, Froemming acted as though he had been around for years. And pitchers who initially criticized his strike zone quickly learned that it was better to remain silent.

Later, racial remarks by Froemming against a female member of baseball's umpiring division got him a 10-day suspension. Overall, his highly visible style behind the plate, including ball-strike calls that could be heard in the bleachers, often suggested that he was never wrong.

Yet, Froemming lasted 37 years in a profession where constant air travel, hotel food, time away from our family and boredom on rainouts would have put most men on a psychiatrist's couch. Comfort came from his $300,000 a year salary.

Often it helps when one who holds a position of authority involving professional athletes is 6-5 and 240 pounds, an advantage Froemming never had. Instead this was a guy whose height, width and weight would fit almost perfectly inside the flame of comedian Lou Costello.

But when it came to never letting a game get out of control or going mouth-to-mouth with a fiery manager like Billy Martin (who he once threw out of a World Series game), Bruce probably had no equal. Make whatever you want out of the fact that baseball's brass didn't assign him to a World Series after 1995.

Players who joked about Froemming being overweight behind his back, often credited Bruce with overly supporting the product that made his home town (Milwaukee) famous.

Growing up in one of the beer centers of America, Froemming was the oldest of three kids who, for financial reasons, probably never even thought about putting a college education at the top of their wish list.

In fact, at about the same time Bruce finished high school, he saw an advertisement in a magazine for the Florida-based Al Somers Umpire School. The decision to go there would mold his life for years to come.

In the spring of 1970, at the age of 18, Froemming became Somers' youngest student. A fast learner who loved what he was doing, Froemming handled attempts to intimidate him on the field (all rookie umpires get tested) like he had the law on his side, which he did.

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By the time Bruce finished school, he was offered a job as a low-level minor league umpire, whose take-charge ability had nothing to do with his age. The going rate for a rookie ump at the time was $3,200 for the season.

Only later did Froemming discover that he had to pay for two uniforms, a whisk broom to clean the plate, plus a ball and strike indicator.

Originally thrilled at finding a room in a rundown hotel for a reported one dollar a night, Bruce was less than happy when he discovered that the nearest bathroom was down two flights of stairs.

Limited in the kind of job Froemming could get in the off-season that would allow him to feed his dream as an umpire, Bruce did a lot of things to survive.

Included in the mix was driving a beer truck, carrying trays of dirty dishes back to the kitchen, plus picking up bodies for a funeral home that paid him $7.50 a corpse.

When Froemming early in his career was offered a chance to work a Florida exhibition game by veteran umpire Al Barlick, Bruce suddenly discovered a word better than yes.

"How about I take home plate?" Froemming asked. "About to blast the kid's brashness after first turning five shades of red, Barlick was immediately cut off by Dodger owner Walter O'Malley.

"Al, you already have all the experience you'll ever need behind home plate," O'Mally said. "But the kid here doesn't." It didn't hurt Bruce either when Ted Williams, the opposing manager that day, told a nearby baseball executive that "I like the fat kid's style."

Possibly the Maytag repairman has more time on his calendar than baseball umpires, but the comparison is a valid one. Off the field, they can't fraternize with anyone. For example, entering a long-time favorite watering hole of players reportedly is an automatic fine.

Overall, umpires lead the league in room service, window shopping and complaints about television sets that refuse to show anything but "snow" at two o'clock in the morning.

Pregame recreation for most umpires includes playing cards, endless movies often interrupted by cat naps and municipal golf courses that charge an arm but not a leg. How they grow the hide of a rhinoceros to protect themselves during games from the cutting remarks and four-letter words of managers, players and fans is a trade secret. And most would rather walk on hot coals in their bare feet than admit the existence of contact lenses.

Even though the marriages of most umpires have the lifespan of a Christmas tree (long road trips away from the family being the chief reason), Mr. And Mrs. Froemming have made it work (along with two sons) for 48 years.