VERO BEACH, Fla. (AP) – The first time Don Zimmer reported to Dodgertown, it was hardly the most charming dot in the baseball universe. Back when ol’ Popeye showed up for spring training as a scared teen, the camp was simply called “the base.”
Fitting for a former naval air station.
“There I am, four guys in a room. Upper and lower bunks. No toilets. No air conditioning. No heat,” the Tampa Bay senior adviser recalled.
“Seven o’clock in the morning, they’d blow a whistle through the barracks and get you all up and get in the chow line for breakfast,” he said.
Those memories may soon be all that’s left.
After 60 years in this sweet spot where players and fans chat on pathways made of crushed seashells, the Dodgers are set to play Monday for the final time at Holman Stadium.
Following the split-squad game against Houston, they’ll head west to finish the exhibition schedule. Next spring, Los Angeles plans to open an $80 million complex in Glendale, Ariz., that they’ll share with the Chicago White Sox.
So long, Don Drysdale Drive. Farewell, Vin Scully Way.
“There’s probably no place in the world that holds more memories for me,” Scully said.
Because of construction delays, there is a chance the move will be postponed and the Hall of Fame broadcaster will get one more year. But the Dodgers’ Class A team left last season, and the end is coming.
When the Dodgers eventually go, make way for Cal Ripken Road and Brooks Robinson Boulevard – the Baltimore Orioles are eager to slide 150 miles north from Fort Lauderdale.
“I’m glad that somebody else is moving in here so it just doesn’t go away to a bunch of condos or something,” said Washington minor league coach John Stearns, a former All-Star catcher. “To me, Vero Beach is just almost sacred as far as spring training is concerned.”
Sure figures to be different in this city of about 20,000 on Florida’s east coast.
What becomes of Dodgertown Elementary School? Will the AM radio station that carried the Dodgers’ exhibitions from China still want them? Who replaces the picture of Dodgers pitcher Jonathan Broxton on the cover of the local phone book?
“It is the closing of an era,” former Dodgers MVP Kirk Gibson said. “It’s just different than any other place.”
Gibson also played for Detroit, which is training in Lakeland, Fla., for the 63rd straight year.
Yet aside from Cooperstown, nowhere does the game’s past and present blend so neatly as Dodgertown. Sandy Koufax showing a minor leaguer how to grip a curveball, Tom Lasorda greeting visitors from his golf cart, Ralph Branca and Brooklyn’s Boys of Summer returning for fantasy camps.
“It always lent itself to a lot of history,” said Steve Sax, part of two Dodgers teams that won the World Series in the 1980s. “I don’t think you’ll ever see anything like it again.”
Probably not a ballpark like Holman.
The seats go just 17 rows deep and the dugouts do not have roofs. There were no outfield fences until the last decade or so; instead, there was a grassy embankment ringed by palm trees.
Quite a change for new manager Joe Torre. He was accustomed to the New York Yankees’ well-guarded complex at Legends Field.
“This is so different. The fans love it, you get a chance to mingle with the players. The intimacy of it is very unique,” he said. That’s in contrast to “where I came from, where everything was security was all over the place.”
Branca remembers the early days at Dodgertown.
A year after training in Havana, the Dodgers started out 1948 in the Dominican Republic. The team later flew into Vero for one day, then left for exhibitions.
The Dodgers permanently moved into the converted naval base in 1949, and Zimmer arrived the next year. The area was sparse and some called it Zero Beach.
“When I first got here, the fields were primitive. There were cockles and spurs all over. And there were cows beyond the outfielders,” Branca said.
Jackie Robinson was the star attraction then. Recently, one of the signs for Jackie Robinson Ave. disappeared, probably taken by a collector.
Scully would like a souvenir, too. Maybe a sign from Vin Scully Way.
“I don’t know what they plan to do with those when the team finally moves, but I certainly would like to have one as a reminder of all those days and nights here,” he said.
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AP Baseball Writer Mike Fitzpatrick and AP Sports Writers Fred Goodall and Andrew Bagnato contributed to this report.
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