As the old baseball adage goes, you know an umpire is doing his job well if you don’t notice him at all.
Next week, Dale Scott will prove to be the exception to the rule as the longtime major league umpire earns enshrinement in the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame on Tuesday, October 3rd. During the induction ceremony, it will be impossible to overlook Scott precisely because he was so exceptional over his 32-year MLB career.
For one celebratory evening, all of the focus will be on the umpire — and it won’t be because he’s watching Lou Piniella kick dirt on home plate.
Scott becomes only the sixth person to be inducted into the Oregon Hall of Fame as an official and just the second umpire. He joins his former colleague Jim Joyce, who was part of the class of 2018.
“[It’s] really quite an honor when you see the people that are in it,” Scott told Outsports. “I mean, people that I as a kid rooted for, especially Oregon Ducks and others that I’m very well aware of who they are… To be in a group in the Oregon Hall of Fame is something that I never, ever, ever thought would ever happen for sure. It is a big honor and it’s very exciting.”
His Hall of Fame class includes Portland Trail Blazers head coach Rick Adelman, Oregon Ducks running back LaMichael James, and the minor league Portland Mavericks, subjects of the documentary “The Battered Bastards of Baseball.”
True to the tongue-in-cheek style that carried him through more than three decades in the majors, when Scott got the call to the Hall, he replied, “I’m just amazed because I was a three-year letterman in tennis, I never won a match my junior year, my senior year they sent me to district… and I lost 6-0, 6-0 in about 20 minutes… so I’m amazed I’m in the Oregon Sports Hall of Fame for this.”
Fortunately, the Hall appreciates wit more than Billy Martin ever did.
In addition to his on-field career, the Oregon Hall of Fame will celebrate Scott’s role as a barrier breaker and his coming out publicly while working as a major league umpire in 2014.
“The fact that I am going to be inducted really makes me feel good — that if there was [any anti-gay] bias out there, it wasn’t enough to stop it,” he asserted.
Scott’s coming out moment factors prominently in the three-minute introductory video of career highlights assembled by the Hall. The montage also features photos of Scott with his husband Mike and pays tribute to Scott “finding himself welcomed within baseball for being his authentic self.”
Following the introduction, Scott will participate in a one-on-one Q&A during which he plans to acknowledge Mike and the rest of his family and friends who have come to support him.
This Hall of Fame honor is extra meaningful to Scott as Oregon is a state with significant family history and the place where he met his husband.
“There is a pride there that I’m a fifth-generation Oregonian who is in the top echelon you can be in sports in the state of Oregon,” he noted, “It blows my mind that it could happen but it also makes me very, very proud.”
He also joked that he’s been very fortunate to live in the present day as opposed to the Oregon his ancestors knew.
“The Scotts have been here for a while although I would’ve been a horrible pioneer,” he admitted, “I mean, that whole covered wagon thing… did they have Grindr?”
If they did, that would’ve turned out to be one more way for an umpire to be noticed.
