It began, as so many great stories do, in a hotel bar, 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. But this was the night they truly became friends.