There are still dreamers among us — still a nostalgic few who allow themselves to be duped by an unsubstantiated newspaper report about an unnamed group that wants to bring spring training back to Vero Beach.
They fondly remember the unique bond that was built between a historic team and a special town. They miss their March memories. They want to believe.
Even when they shouldn’t.
Regardless of what you might’ve read or heard, the hard truth is this: Spring training isn’t returning to Vero Beach any time soon, if ever, unless the economics of Major League Baseball change drastically.
Not only is Indian River County unlikely to spend the ridiculous sums necessary to build the two-team facility desired by today’s owners, but our community is ill-suited to support Grapefruit League baseball on an everyday basis.
The costs are too big.
The population – only about 140,000 people reside in this county – is too small.
“A lot has changed over the past 30 years,” said Bobby McCarthy, owner of Bobby’s Restaurant, a Vero Beach landmark that opened in 1981 and quickly became a popular, spring-training gathering place for the Los Angeles Dodgers. “This isn’t the same town.
“When I came here in 1978, Vero Beach was a retirement town, so people had time to go to the games. You could get a ticket for $2.50, and there were still a lot of Dodgers fans from the old Brooklyn days coming down.
“Now, the demographics are different,” he added. “There are more people here, but a lot of them are working people who can’t just take off in the middle of the day to go to a ballgame. And a lot of the older, retired people aren’t going to pay $23 for a ticket and $6 for a beer.”
As for the Dodgers’ ties to Brooklyn …
“They’re pretty much gone,” McCarthy said. “Brooklyn was a long time ago. Most of those fans are dead now.”
Besides, even if county officials had been successful in luring the Baltimore Orioles’ spring-training operations to Vero Beach in the immediate aftermath of the Dodgers’ desertion to Arizona in 2009, our connection to the team wouldn’t have been the same.
It wouldn’t have been the way some imagined in their dreams, where Vero Beach and Dodgertown were one and the same.
It would’ve felt different.
It would feel different if, suddenly, major league owners no longer saw spring training as a revenue stream and a couple of them decided to put baseball back in Vero Beach.
Yet, when our Stuart-based daily newspaper reported last week that a St. Lucie County commissioner said an unidentified group was trying to bring the Toronto Blue Jays and Washington Nationals to a new facilty to be built off I-95 in Vero Beach, some local baseball fans actually believed it.
It didn’t matter that the Nationals already had hooked up with the Houston Astros in a joint, ongoing effort to get a new, two-team facility built in Palm Beach County.
It didn’t matter that the St. Lucie County commissioner, Tod Mowery, didn’t name – or didn’t know – any of the parties in this group.
It didn’t matter that, according to the report, the group would need funding from the county, state and teams to embark on the project.
Some people believe what they want to believe, and they wanted to believe spring training would be coming back to Vero Beach.
“There have been no teams that have approached us about utilizing our facility,” said Craig Callan, vice president at Historic Dodgertown, the complex where the Dodgers conducted spring training for 61 years.
Asked specifically about the possibility of a new spring-training facility being built off I-95, Callan said he hadn’t spoken to any county officials regarding the report and didn’t know names or specifics.
However, Callan said he would expect any serious proposal to require the approval of former Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley and his Historic Dodgertown partners. In fact, he said he believes the partnership’s lease gives it the right to “say no” to the county funding another such facility.
“Peter has said that if something is good for the community, if it’s a win-win situation for Historic Dodgertown and the community, we would do everything possible to cooperate,” Callan said. “But, frankly, we’ve put a lot of money into this place, and any other such facility could be used as a competitor to Historic Dodgertown – not necessarily during the two months of spring training, but during the rest of the year.”
At this point, though, Callan said, “We really don’t have anything to say. It’s not our project. We’re not involved.”
For what it’s worth: Callan, who has run the Dodgertown complex for more than 30 years, didn’t seem overly concerned.
He oversaw the design and construction of the Dodgers’ new, spring-training digs at Camelback Ranch in Glendale, AZ, where they share a state-of-the-art facility with the Chicago White Sox. He knows what team owners want.
One complex.
Two teams.
Big crowds.
“That’s the modern model,” Callan said. “You’re generating revenue every day because when one team is playing away, the other team is playing home. You’re also saving money on travel because you’ll play some games against each other.
“That’s why you need to be in a community that can support having games every day as opposed to every other day. You have to have the right demographics.”
You have to have plenty of money, too.
The cost of building the Camelback Ranch complex, including all the necessary infrastructure, has been reported at $158 million. The price tag for the stadium alone was in excess of $100 million.
Compare those figures to the $12 million in Dodgertown improvements the county offered the Orioles, who wanted $20 million, and it becomes obvious that the cost of building an entirely new complex at some other site would be prohibitive – because the teams aren’t going to pitch in.
The only realistic option, then, would be Historic Dodgertown, which was built to accommodate only one team and would need to be expanded. Also, Holman Stadium, which opened in 1953, would need to be completely renovated or, more likely, rebuilt.
At a minimum, we’d be looking at a cost of $30 million, and probably more.
So maybe, given the current economic structure in Major League Baseball, we’re better off without spring training. Certainly, we no longer need it.
Anyone who spent the past couple of months in Vero Beach – driving on our roads, filling our hotels, eating in our restaurants, shopping in our stores and teeing off on our golf courses – knows how many seasonal residents and visitors were here. It felt as if our population had doubled.
Would spring training have brought more people to town?
Sure.
But how many spring training seasons would it take to make our capital investment worthwhile?
Then there’s this: With Historic Dodgertown operating as a year-round, multi-sport facility that brings in teams, games and tournaments from across the U.S. and around the world, the complex is having a greater overall impact on our local economy now than the six weeks of spring training did during the Dodgers’ final years here.
“I miss spring training, but I’m a baseball guy,” McCarthy said. “And there are still some people here who like to reminisce about Dodgertown and the way it was. The Dodgers had a lot of great years in this town. But, really, the Dodger tradition and mystique are gone. The feel-good times ended when Peter O’Malley sold the team.
“Don’t get me wrong,” he added. “Some people still miss it. Every once in a while, I’ll get asked if we’ll ever get another team here. But it’s not a regular topic of conversation. People have moved on.”
Vero Beach was once America’s quintessential spring-training town. Dodgertown was hallowed ground, as much a part of baseball lore as Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field and Fenway Park. The Dodgers belonged to us, every bit as much as they belonged to Brooklyn and then Los Angeles.
Many of us still fondly remember those wonderful years when there was no better place to spend a sun-splashed March afternoon than Holman Stadium.
Some of you, though, still cling to the dream that Grapefruit League baseball will someday return to Vero Beach – even when you shouldn’t.
When the Dodgers’ buses pulled away from Dodgertown at dusk on St. Patrick’s Day 2008, they took our spring training with them. It’s probably not coming back. And that’s OK.
Spring training isn’t what it was, and never will be again.
Not here, anyway.
