One morning last week, while noshing on a bagel at the local Panera Bread eatery, I found myself sitting across from two New York-sounding gentlemen who were discussing their Florida spring-training vacation.
Being a former baseball writer who grew up on Long Island, I easily engaged them in a conversation, during which they explained that they were Mets fans on their way to the team’s camp in Port St. Lucie, now the only Grapefruit League city within an hour’s drive of Vero Beach.
First, though, they stopped here.
“We’re from Brooklyn,” one of them said. “We’ve gotta go to Dodgertown.”
It didn’t seem to matter that the Los Angeles (nee Brooklyn) Dodgers hadn’t trained in Vero Beach since 2008, when they deserted us for a new, state-of-the-art facility in Arizona and severed a mostly wonderful, 61-year marriage between the team and town.
The visitors from Gotham were on a bucket-list adventure, and for any longtime baseball fan, Dodgertown remains hallowed ground.
They just wanted to see the place.
“I hear a lot of that,” said Craig Callan, vice president of what is now Historic Dodgertown, a multi-sports complex that attracts youth-league, high school, college and professional teams for training camps, games and tournaments. “People still come by in droves, just to see Dodgertown.
“I’m not saying cars are lined up, but there’s a steady flow of cars rolling through the property, especially this time of year,” he added. “Some people park and walk around, stopping to take pictures. You see a lot of them posing next to the ‘Spring Training Home of the Dodgers’ sign or at Holman Stadium.
“But that was Peter O’Malley’s vision.”
O’Malley, the former Dodgers owner who heads a partnership that runs Historic Dodgertown, wanted to preserve the team’s nostalgic connection to Vero Beach and the park-like grounds of what was once America’s quintessential spring-training complex.
Though the facility attracts other sports that help financially sustain its operations and have a year-round impact on the local economy – football, soccer, lacrosse, rugby and softball also are played there – baseball is still the big draw, particularly from February through April.
This past weekend, more than 1,300 players (ages 9 to 18) on 87 teams representing 12 states and Canada gathered at Historic Dodgertown for the Presidents Day Challenge baseball tournament.
Starting this week and continuing for two months, high school and college baseball and softball teams will conduct spring-training sessions at the fabled facility. A South Korean professional baseball team has been working out at the complex since Feb. 1.
“It might not have the sizzle of Dodgers,” Callan said, “but we’re busy and we’re helping fill hotel rooms and restaurants around town.”
How many of those hotel rooms and restaurants are filled by spring-training visitors stopping in Vero Beach to spend time at Historic Dodgertown before continuing on to major league camps in Port St. Lucie, Jupiter or West Palm Beach?
Nine years after the Dodgers headed west, does spring training in Florida – especially along the I-95 corridor – still provide a boost to our local economy?
Nobody seems to know.
Historic Dodgertown doesn’t keep track of visitors who aren’t connected to events held at the complex. Nor does the county or the Chamber of Commerce or the Treasure Coast Sports Commission.
“We do get calls from visitors asking about Dodgertown,” said Allison McNeal, the Chamber’s tourism director. “But there’s no way to know how many of them are coming down for spring training or how many actually go to Dodgertown.”
Not even the Florida Sports Foundation, which promotes Florida’s sports industry and annually monitors the economic impact of spring training around the state, could provide any hard information about Grapefruit League-related visits to Historic Dodgertown.
But Nick Gandy, the foundation’s communications director, believes the numbers could be significant.
Gandy said many of the out-of-state visitors who plan trips to Florida’s spring-training sites in Port St. Lucie (Mets), Jupiter (St. Louis Cardinals and Miami Marlins) and West Palm Beach (Washington Nationals and Houston Astros) are avid and knowledgeable baseball fans.
“I don’t have the statistics to back it up, but, as nostalgic as baseball fans are, I’d bet that a lot of the people who come to Florida for spring training make a point of going to Vero Beach,” Gandy said. “Dodgertown, with all its history, is still a special place.”
In 2014, in fact, Historic Dodgertown was designated a Florida Heritage Landmark for its unique historic significance extending beyond baseball – specifically because it was the first racially-integrated spring training site in the South.
And for those wondering: Historic Dodgertown encourages you stop in, tour the premises and reminisce.
“We welcome you here,” Callan said. “We want you to come through the gates and spend time driving around or walking the grounds. Peter came back here because he wanted to keep the history of the Dodgertown alive.
“The Dodgers are gone and you’re not going to see a major league spring training game, but if you’re a true baseball aficionado, you’ll enjoy just being here,” he added. “It’s more like a pilgrimage now, like going to a walking museum.”
Historic Dodgertown charges a nominal fee for admission, but only when there are scheduled games or tournaments on the property.
“Otherwise, we’re wide open,” Callan said. “And the facility is actually in better shape now than when the Dodgers were here.”
This year, for the first time since the Space Coast Stadium complex opened in 1994, Brevard County will not be part of the Grapefruit League. The Nationals moved their spring-training headquarters from Viera to the new Ballpark of the Palm Beaches.
So Vero Beach is no longer sandwiched between two spring-training sites.
“I don’t know if that helps or hurts,” said Rick Hatcher, executive director of the Treasure Coast Sports Commission. “Nationals fans visiting Viera weren’t that far away. But now, if you’re coming down I-95 on a spring-training trip, your first stop can be Dodgertown.”
But there’s no way to know how often that happens. To be blunt: It has been a long time since Historic Dodgertown was Dodgertown.
The place probably means more to us – to the people fortunate enough to live here and remember what made spring training in Vero Beach so memorable – than it does to today’s typical baseball fan.
But Dodgertown is all about memories. And memories are all we have left.
“I don’t foresee spring training coming back to Vero Beach,” Callan said. “No major league team has expressed any interest in coming here.”
Some baseball fans, though, continue to include Vero Beach on their Grapefruit League map.
All these years later, they still “gotta go to Dodgertown.”
