Spring Training Update: 03-06-07
Dodgers Likely to Leave Vero Beach for Arizona in 2009
Spring is coming to a close at Dodgertown in Vero Beach Andrew Astleford, Orlando Sentinel Staff Writer
March 6, 2007
VERO BEACH -- Down the road from Dodgertown, the lunch crowd files into Bobby's Restaurant, some young, some old. Talk of batting orders, the bullpen and starting rotations begins.
Regulars wash down burgers with brews at the bar. Waitresses drift from one table to the next, like bees buzzing from flower to flower. Clamor grows louder.
Here, it's forever spring. Bobby's and the Los Angeles Dodgers go way back. The two have been close since the restaurant's start in 1981. Vin Scully has been a spring regular. Sandy Koufax, too. Autographed photos line the walls, all symbols of Dodgers past in Vero Beach that will soon begin to fade.
"Beer always." – Rick Monday
"To Bobby: You and the Dodgers are great." – Your friend, Tommy Lasorda
Bobby's is just one thread of Vero Beach's Dodgertown fabric that will be severed when the Dodgers move spring-training operations to Glendale, Ariz., in 2009. Vero Beach, the Dodgers' spring home since 1948, no longer can lean on nostalgia when proximity and progress draw the organization westward once more. The Dodgers have outgrown their Brooklyn roots. Their Eastern fan base has drifted away.
Sometimes, even legends' ghosts need a new hangout to haunt.
"Dodger tradition is a thing of the past," Bobby's owner, Bobby McCarthy, said with Dodgers memorabilia visible over his shoulder. "It's corporate now. All ties to the Brooklyn Dodgers have moved on."
Now, it's Dodgertown's turn.
Glendale's $80-million complex is about a five-hour drive from Los Angeles. Dodgers officials say it will be easier for southern California fans to see the team train. Soon, 60 years of history here will be left behind.
Circumstances have come full circle. Vero Beach's relationship with the Dodgers began in 1947. Local businessman and airport manager Bud Holman first approached Brooklyn management about helping
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the Dodgers find a spring-training home along the East Coast. He had property under lease near Vero Beach's airport. It contained a Naval air base, vacant after World War II. Holman pitched the base's space and barracks-style housing as the perfect situation for the Dodgers' needs.
"He had the lease during World War II," said Bump Holman, Bud's son. "After World War II, it came back to the city. Then they renewed his lease, and then he had all this property. Of course, it was a lot bigger now than when the war had started. So he was looking for something that would fill the space and be good for the city."
Holman invited Dodgers executive Branch Rickey to visit. Holman's aggressive salesmanship impressed Rickey. The news spread fast in Brooklyn: Vero Beach had promise.
It took another meeting months later with E.J. Bavasi, who then was general manager of the Dodgers' farm team in Nashua, N.H., before a deal could be made. Bavasi, now 92, remembers that Holman's passion left no angle untouched.
"I checked into a motel and then we proceeded to City Hall to meet with the city fathers," Bavasi wrote last week in an e-mail from La Jolla, Calif. "For the first hour, we discussed the possibilities of turning the base into a baseball facility. The accommodations for the major-league players were just fine. The minor-league accommodations, with a little work, would be more than sufficient.
"There were 18 apartments located in the swimming pool area. I finally suggested a 20-year lease. But the city was adamant about keeping the apartments. Bud Holman took out his checkbook and said, 'You [expletives] don't know what the Dodgers will mean to our city.'"
Eventually, the kinks were worked out. And in 1948, the Dodgers played their first exhibition in front of 6,000 fans. Dodgertown was born.
"Those days, we had World War II naval junior officers quarters," said Maury Wills, a former Dodgers shortstop who first came to Dodgertown in 1951. "Two stories, an all-framed building, sitting off the ground on cinder blocks about two feet [high]. No heat. And eight players in a room. And nobody knew anybody when they got there. I'd do it all over again."
Dodgers officials say it's time for change. Dodgertown's crowds have thinned with each passing year, and Bump Holman said the grounds have seen better days. Pride here isn't what it used to be.
"When the O'Malleys had it, they loved Vero Beach," Holman said. "That showed in the way they kept the place. It was a showplace. It was always beautifully landscaped.
"I think a lot of that has gone away with the new owners. When [Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.] had it, they kept it up fair, but you could tell it didn't have the interest that it had when the O'Malleys were around. Now, I think with [Frank McCourt] -- I don't know if it's lack of interest or lack of money, but that place is really going downhill."
Now, a game against Boston or St. Louis draws more red than blue. Empty seats are common. Arizona's Cactus League will have 14 teams by 2009, up from eight in 1997. The pieces have aligned for the Dodgers to move west again.
Dodgers officials are willing to pay Indian River County and the City of Vero Beach $15 million to escape a lease that runs through 2021. Glendale city officials expect the Dodgers to make a $15 million economic impact on their community. They understand replacing history can't be done. Following it will be tough enough.
"The hope is not to recreate Dodgertown," Glendale City Manager Ed Beasley said. "But the hope is to use that as a basis for a lot of the things people have become accustomed to."
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The Arizona deal isn't official, as not all of the contracts have been signed. But Dodgers officials say it's only a matter of time.
"My hope would be that when we exit," said Craig Callan, the Dodgers' vice president of spring training and minor-league facilities, "the town will not be adversely affected."
That could be a tough sell. Vero Beach is looking for a replacement. There is talk the Baltimore Orioles might come. Sentimental value runs deep with those who consider the Dodgers an important part of Vero Beach's history, though. Nearly six decades of memories live here. Those die hard.
What will happen to Roy Campanella Boulevard? Don Sutton Court? The mound where Don Drysdale's cleats gripped the dirt? The grass where Jackie Robinson used to run? What will happen to the Italian place on Sixth Avenue where Lasorda ate spaghetti alongside Mike Piazza? The seat in Row 14 where Chickie Anderson, whose grandfather, Stephen McKeever, helped build Ebbets Field, spends spring afternoons a little closer to the past?
"This place will lose its value," said Nick Williams, 81, a security officer who has worked at Dodgertown for 20 years. "They might get another team here, but it won't be like the Dodgers."
It's mid-morning now. License plates from as far away as Illinois pepper Dodgertown's parking lot, every paved spot long since full. Fans hover around batting cages. It doesn't take long to overhear autograph seekers plotting amongst themselves.
Holman Stadium welcomes the annual spring embrace, another month that time doesn't seem to touch. Yet the days are numbered, the chance for new memories to be made at Dodgertown now few.
Even here, where spring is forever, the season must change.
Andrew Astleford can be reached at aastleford@orlandosentinel
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