Respect mutual between Scully and men in blue

It began, as so many great stories do, in a hotel bar.

Specifically, it was the back-room bar at the since-demolished Shamrock Hilton in Houston, where an umpire found himself sitting two seats away from an iconic broadcaster on the eve of a Dodgers-Astros series.

Bruce Froemming sidled over when the seat next to Vin Scully opened up. The two, by this point in the early 1980s, had known each other awhile, going back to Froemming’s days as a Minor League ump invited to Dodger owner Walter O’Malley’s St. Patrick’s Day parties at Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Fla.

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But this was the night they truly became friends.

“Bruce, you don’t know this,” Scully told the ump, “but I don’t ever bother an umpire. I don’t second-guess calls. The only reason I would ever bother an umpire is if he doesn’t give me a clear call on strikes, because I can’t say anything until he calls it.”

Froemming, who was in the midst of his 37 seasons as a big league ump, respected that rationale, and he respected the heck out of Scully. On that night, he learned the respect flowed both ways. He learned that Scully, the man whose melodic voice has now been painting the picture of baseball for his listeners and viewers for 67 seasons, cared not just for the Dodger blue but for the men in blue.

And Froemming never forgot it.

So one day in the early 2000s, when Froemming was working a game at Dodger Stadium, he presented an idea to his crew mate Mike Winters.

“When we go to home plate,” Froemming said, “let’s take our hats off and tip them to Vin in the press …

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