As a teenager, Bruce Froemming saw an ad in the Milwaukee Journal seeking kids to umpire games in local parks for $56 a week.
“I got the job,” Froemming says. “I worked four games a day, four days a week. There was no money in the family, so if I wanted to have fun, I had to work. I learned early on all I cared about was ball.”
At Custer High School, he was cut from the varsity baseball team. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. But I knew it would have something to do with baseball.”
The answer came after he attended an umpire school in Daytona Beach, Fla. By 1971, Froemming had gotten into Major League Baseball, where he would become the longest-serving umpire (with 37 full seasons) and second (to Bill Klem) in total games called, with 5,152. Froemming’s certain Hall of Fame career (he’ll be eligible in 2010) was legendary for his no-nonsense control of games.
A classic example of this came on Sept. 2, 1972. Chicago Cubs against the San Diego Padres. Cubs pitcher Milt Pappas had a perfect game through 8 2/3 innings and faced a 2-2 count on the Padres’ 27th batter. Though Pappas’ next pitch was close, Froemming still called it a ball.
“He came off the mound toward me,” Froemming recalls. “I told the catcher if he came any further, he could keep walking to the showers.” Pappas retreated and threw another pitch: ball four. The perfect game was lost. Pappas still got a no-hitter when the next batter popped out, but nursed his anger for years after this.
As for Froemming, when told he could have been famous as the 12th umpire in big league history to call a perfect game, he growled back, “Yeah, who was number 11?”
“Bruce is one-of-a-kind,” says MLB Commissioner Bud Selig. “He was rough, tough, the kind of disposition an umpire needs. He loved what he was doing, every day. That’s the way it should be, the way it needs to be.”
On Sept. 30, 2007, with the Milwaukee Brewers hosting the Padres, Froemming manned third base for his last game. He was 68, the oldest man to ever umpire a major league game.“I was out for two funerals,” Froemming says. “Other than that, never off the field.”
