Homegrown: Easy to find something new, old about baseball at Historic Dodgertown

Have you ever frequented a favorite place, but never spent a few minutes paying attention to the details of what's really there?

Historic Dodgertown, the spring training home of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers from 1948 to 2008, has been one of my favorite spots since 1985. Then you could enjoy a day at the ballpark, with a hot dog and beer, for $10.

Nowadays, the Indian River County-owned complex attracts amateur, college and professional athletes and sports officials who hone their skills at tournaments, camps and other sorts of training. With 89 villa-style rooms, Historic Dodgertown also plays host to business conferences, weddings and other gatherings. 

It's been that way since 2009, when Minor League Baseball leased the facility from the county to start the sports and conference business. 

In 2011, former Dodgers owner Peter O'Malley, his sister, Terry Seidler, and former Dodgers pitchers Hideo Nomo and Chan Ho Park formed a partnership to take over the lease and run the business. O'Malley, 79, said last week he hopes to eventually turn the lease over to Major League Baseball.

The almost 100-acre Vero Beach campus remains a place where some of the world’s greatest athletes gather, from retired baseball players such as Dave Winfield and Ken Griffey Jr. and former University of Texas and NFL quarterback Vince Young, to former gold-medal Olympians Abby Wambach (soccer) and Jennie Finch (softball).

Winfield, Griffey and Finch spoke to teenage baseball and softball players from across the nation in July. Young, 34, tried out with the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League in April. Wambach, the most prolific goal scorer in international soccer competition, trained at the campus with the Washington Freedom women’s professional team in 2010. 

It's a place for talented young athletes, too, like Dominic Smith and Amed Rosario, half of the New York Mets starting infield. They, along with several other Mets starters, have participated in the complex's annual Jackie Robinson Day game. The April 15 game this year pitted the host St. Lucie Mets and the Florida Fire Frogs of the Florida State League.

In other words, you never know who you're going to run into out there.

That's the way it was most of the time when the Dodgers hosted spring training there. Celebrities frequented games at Holman Stadium. The Dodgers' clubhouse was a quarter-mile east of the stadium, and you literally could walk into players on their way to and from Holman. 

Dodgertown, from its inception, was about turning good ballplayers into great ones. That's celebrated in a display on a wall outside Holman Stadium dedicated to dozens of Major League Baseball Hall of Famers who played there.

It's one of many fascinating historical references easy to miss if you're walking around.

The great ones are honored all over the complex. Numerous Dodgers legends, from Sandy Koufax and Duke Snider to broadcasters Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrin, are honored with street signs and/or meeting rooms.

Meeting rooms dedicated to Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella, who helped pave the way for African-Americans in professional sports, are two of the largest. 

The Robinson room, in what used to be the Dodgers' clubhouse, has fascinating memorabilia on its walls. My favorite piece: A Sept. 22, 1947, Time magazine cover with Robinson's portrait and the caption, "He and the boss took a chance." It was published toward the end of Robinson's first season with the Dodgers.

Campanella, at the peak of his catching career, was paralyzed in a car crash the winter before the Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Although his room celebrates his career, it also has an image of Dodgers catchers Steve Yeager and Mike Scioscia kneeling to chat with Campanella in his wheelchair.

There's no other place I know, other than the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, that has such an interesting collection of team memorabilia.

Historic Dodgertown has turned old office space into Championship Hall, which honors the six world championships the Dodgers won between 1955 and 1988. Vero Beach residents Sandy Koufax and Ron Perranoski are among four Dodgers (along with Johnny Podres and Jim Gilliam) to win four championships.

My favorite displays include:

• A 1955 Sports Illustrated cover, then 25 cents or $7.50 a year, declaring Podres its third Sportsman of the Year. Podres had two World Series wins, including a 2-0 shutout against the New York Yankees in Game 7.
• Memorabilia featuring Lou Johnson's home run off Stuart resident Jim Kaat and Koufax's 2-0 shutout in Game 7 of the 1965 World Series vs. the Minnesota Twins. 
• A 1988 jersey worn by Kirk Gibson and a Sports Illustrated cover featuring "The New Mr. October," Orel Hershiser. 

Outside, you can watch youngsters pitch in the same place where Don Drysdale threw to John Roseboro. You can sit on the same bench, “Campy’s Bullpen,” where Campanella shared fishing stories with chefs in the old mess hall. There’s even a sliding pit named after record-setting base stealer Maury Wills.

Dodgertown was built on a former World War II-era naval air station. It was turned over to Vero Beach as part of the airport. Until the early 1970s, more than 600 Dodgers prospects spent their spring nights in the Navy’s old barracks, which had no air-conditioning or heat.

In 2018, the facility plans to celebrate its 70th anniversary. To learn more, stay overnight at the resort or to take a tour, call 866-656-4900.

About Homegrown

Homegrown is a bi-weekly feature on the people, places and phenomena that make the Treasure Coast unique. If you have a story idea for the series, send it to us at www.tcpalm.com/homegrowntips.

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