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 The Dodgers prepare to play one of their final games in the Grapefruit League spring training site at Vero Beach, Fla. |
It's hard saying goodbye to half a century of memories
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
I walked down Jackie
Robinson Drive. I turned at Gil Hodges Lane. I crossed over at
Pee Wee Reese Parkway. I stopped at Duke Snider Street.
Then I golf carted across the grounds with Tommy Lasorda. We
ran across Maury Wills and stopped to talk about how we were
the only two guys who really knew how to properly spell our first
names.
This was my last time at Vero Beach, the spring training home
of the Dodgers, first of Brooklyn and now for 51 years of Los
Angeles, in its 60th March as the site of preparation for the
team’s baseball season.
Then I got into my car, drove back to my Florida place, pulled
out an old Dodgers media guide and bawled. No crying in baseball?
Tom Hanks never got that right.
The Dodgers bought Vero Beach, an old Naval station from World
War II days, for a buck in 1948 with promises of fixing it up,
bringing the team there for training and encouraging the tourists
to follow.
Jackie Robinson trained there in his second Brooklyn season of
1948. His pictures playing first base that 1947 rookie season
are all over the walls and wife Rachel, in a Florida newspaper
interview, recalled how she had to duck down so no one would
see her leave camp in the bus that brought the black help in
so she could get to town to have her hair done.
“Little Jackie (he was two at the time) sort of ruined all
that when the bus went by the swimming pool and he waved to the
children of all of the other players,” she laughed.
There was Campy’s hangout out back with the cooks and the
clean-up crew where the great Brooklyn catcher leaned on a chair
against the porch and told baseball stories of his days in the
old Negro Leagues.
There were the old wooden dormitories where the young, unmarried
Dodgers were housed and the streets soon gained their names as
they made their mark with the team.
A couple of kid pitchers in the middle 1950s, Sandy Koufax of
Brooklyn and Don Drysdale of California, were supposed to be
curfewed in one night when an old coach named Lasorda saw them
sneaking out of the barracks window. He just let them go because
he knew that even 20-year-old pitchers need a few nights away
from the range once in a while.
Branch Rickey had acquired the place after he realized his Cuba
experiment in 1947’s spring would not work. He got the grounds,
built the camp, created a tradition and built so many winners.
There was a large bar in the main building for the press and
the stories they told of Dodgers past and present went on for
hours. It was as much fun to hear of Rex Barney trying to throw
a strike down the middle of the plate between the cords as it
was to hear of a newspaper man out of action for over-indulging.
Reporters wrote the stories for the weary scribe and when one
had the nerve to show
his substitute tale to the inebriated sportswriter he bellowed,
“Yeah, that’s the kind of crap they want.”
The Yankees trained in St. Petersburg in those days, later the
home of the New York Mets, and the journey across the state was
one the veterans battled to miss. Gil Hodges made the five hour
journey once, his knee stiffened and he never could run again.
Bobby Bragan taught Maury Wills to hit left handed in the back
fields of that camp and he was finally able to begin a magnificent
big league career as a switch hitter.
Koufax worked on his control for half a dozen years there before
his catcher, Norm Sherry, suggested he throw easier rather than
harder. The Hall of Fame was the result.
All of the Dodgers of the past 60 years had their time there--Steve
Garvey, Tommy Davis, Fernando Valenzuela, Mike Piazza and the
rest. Each had a Vero memory that would stay a part of their
resume.
Now the new owners, led by Los Angeles industrialists and realtor
Frank McCourt, think Vero Beach, Florida is not for them or their
Los Angeles team. They are building a spring training facility
in nearby Glendale, Arizona.
Jackie won’t be there or Pee Wee or Gil. They probably won’t
even put up a sign that a team known as the Brooklyn Dodgers
had anything to do with this Los Angeles franchise.
Sure, I know, time marches on. Sixty years is long enough for
any spring training camp. A lot of us kids from Brooklyn will
miss Vero Beach. I’ll probably cry every time I pass the
road sign for that town on my next Florida trip.
©2008 by Maury Allen. The Maury Allen
caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This column first posted
March 24, 2008.
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