In Vero Beach, Sale Is Hot Topic

VERO BEACH, Fla. — You don’t have to be a Southern Californian or a Brooklynite, and you don’t have to love baseball, to bleed Dodger Blue. You just have to live here.

“Oh, I hope they don’t leave,” said Sunny Pauley, 91, just coming off the links at the Dodgertown Golf Club, where she has been playing for 27 years. “I’d say I was shocked at the news the Dodgers are for sale, just like Tommy Lasorda said he was. They have been here so long, and they do so much good for this town.”

Fifty years ago next month, the Dodgers--then of Brooklyn--began traveling to this citrus-belt town on Florida’s east coast for spring training, and they have been coming here ever since. They rented the property that first year--for $1--but the baseball club has since become owner of more than 450 acres and built here a complex of diamonds, training facilities, housing, two golf courses and a conference center that is unique among major league teams. The Dodgers even own several acres of orange groves.

No other ballclub owns its own spring training facility, and no other enjoys such an intimate, time-tested relationship with its springtime home. During the six to eight weeks of spring training, which officially begins Feb. 14, the Dodgers are credited with pumping more than $20 million into the local economy.

With a seasonal high 450 employees, and a $3.5-million annual payroll, the Dodgers are one of the five biggest private employers in a largely rural county with a total population of about 100,000. But even when the players leave, and the tourists go home, the Dodgers stay, employing 250 year-round, lending executives to community arts and service boards, and filling the role of generous corporate benefactor.

“The Dodgers are an integral part of the social and cultural life of Vero Beach,” said John Little, a retired city manager who describes himself as a good friend of Dodger owner Peter O’Malley. “My hope is that whoever acquires the Dodgers will realize the benefits of keeping them here. But then, nothing lasts forever.”

Indeed, the 18,000 citizens of Vero Beach, along with the other residents of Indian River County, are braced for change. Six days after the surprise announcement that the team was for sale, the signs saying, “Welcome to Vero Beach--Spring training Home of the Los Angeles Dodgers” remain in place, and Dodgertown itself is abuzz with preparations for the team’s arrival.

But as Milt Thomas, director of economic development for the Vero Beach Chamber of Commerce put it, “It’s like when a hurricane forms. You know it’s out there, but you can’t see it or its effects, and you don’t worry too much about it yet. But we know.”

For some, that knowledge translates into outright alarm.

“Surprise and alarm,” says county commissioner Ken Macht. “The history we’ve had with the Dodgers over the years has been as good a situation as you could ever hope for. They don’t ask for anything they don’t pay for. They are first-rate citizens.

“So I think our alarm is based on the fear that what is coming won’t be as good as what we have.”

Speculation is rampant here that any buyer of the Dodgers--especially a corporate giant or conglomerate--will fail to appreciate the sunny synergy between the town and the team that has only grown stronger since that day in 1947 when then-owner Branch Rickey stopped to have a look at the place.

“Many people first came to Vero Beach to see a game and then moved here after they retired,” said Macht.

Still, Vero Beach is relatively remote--about 100 miles southeast of Orlando--and the market potential limited.

“We have a unique relationship,” says Thomas. “But from a new owner’s perspective, they may see a need to generate cash. And lots of places will offer a brand new facility.”

An editorial in the Press Journal, Vero Beach’s daily newspaper, compared the announcement that the Dodgers were for sale to the shock of hearing that the National League would adopt the designated-hitter rule.

“The whole idea just doesn’t sound right,” said the paper. “Much of what Vero Beach has become over the past 50 years can be traced to the Dodgers.”

Vero Beach Mayor Jack Grossett said, “It would be a mortal sin for someone to buy the Dodgers and leave the spring training facility at Dodgertown.”

Added county commissioner Fran Adams, “I think the emotional loss would be harder than the economic loss.”

No one was hit harder by the news than the Dodgers’ Vero Beach employees.

“We’re still a bit shocked,” said Craig B. Callan, 47, Dodgertown director and a Brooklyn native who has worked for the organization here for almost 20 years. He got the word that the team would be sold in a telephone call from Dodger Vice President Bob Graziano just an hour or so before O’Malley’s press conference.

“Fortunately, we’re busy,” Callan said. “We have a Korean league team arriving Jan. 27 and we have a lot of work to do.”

To best understand what losing the Dodgers would mean to Vero Beach, one would have to be a mid-winter visitor from New York or Toronto, perhaps, a snowbird on holiday who one February day finds himself gripping a cold beer and a bag of peanuts, basking in the sunshine while sitting in one of the 6,500 colorful seats of Holman Stadium as the likes of Roy Campanella or Sandy Koufax or Mike Piazza prepares for another glorious season.

“We came up for the workouts every year, just to watch the players loosen up,” said Bruce Sharron, a resident of upstate New York who makes his winter home in nearby Fort Pierce. “I’ve followed the Dodgers since Brooklyn. I sure would like to see them stay.”

The stadium is built on the site of a naval air station abandoned after World War II, and is named after onetime airport manager Bud Holman, who persuaded Rickey to have a look at Vero Beach as a permanent spring home for his Dodgers. When Walter O’Malley acquired majority ownership of the team in 1950, he worked out a long-term lease with the city.

Over the years, the Dodgers bought the air base land, along with hundreds of acres around it, built two golf courses, six practice fields, indoor batting cages and pitching tunnels, tennis courts, swimming pool, offices, housing for players and executives and a conference center that is used year-round. More than $1 million worth of construction, including a new clubhouse at the nine-hole golf course, is underway.

In 1980, the Dodgers moved their eastern Class A minor league franchise here. Dodgertown has also played host to professional football team training camps, and is used for adult fantasy baseball camps.

Callan says there will be spring training at Dodgertown this year. But after that?

“It’s out of our control,” said Callan, who last year served as president of the local United Way campaign. “Mr. O’Malley has assured us that it won’t be a quick sale, and that his priority is finding a quality buyer who shares the Dodger philosophy.

“This is one of the best spring training facilities in baseball. It generates revenue year-round. But if it doesn’t work out, we will have had a great run in Vero Beach.”