For One Baseball Fan, the Search for a ‘Sports Mecca’ Ends in Vero Beach

About two weeks ago, I left New York looking for a little bit of sunshine and a weeklong getaway. Many of us did, I suppose, but my paradise was a small town in Florida that I’d never been to and that most have never heard of.

Vero Beach isn’t on the map for most spring breaks. It’s quiet and sprawling with a population just under 20,000. It’s supposed to have beautiful beaches, though I never did end up seeing them. There are a few cheap townie bars that have that soaked smell of beer and bourbon that you try to escape when you leave the city. And let’s just say Girls Gone Wild would do well to stay away.

For me, it was the perfect destination, and my co-columnist Josh and I made it the heart of a weeklong road trip. We were going to spring training, not spring break, and Vero holds the crown jewel of preseason baseball—Dodgertown.

We stayed at the kind of motels that, as Josh would say, ruin marriages. We got around in a “taxi” called the Klub Kar, a stripped-out minivan with no AC. We were happy with clean sheets and were barely disappointed not to find any. At that point, not much else mattered. At 10 a.m. the next day we’d make our way over to Dodgertown to wander for an afternoon.

Sixty years ago, when still Brooklyn’s team, the Dodgers took over a Navy barracks in Vero and essentially started the tradition of spring training. It became an academy of sorts, the backbone of instruction for one of baseball’s greatest franchises. Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson, Sandy Koufax—they all had their moments there.

The complex itself is a world to get lost in. Practice fields and closed batting cages make up much of the property. But there is also the golf course and the hotel, the event spaces and conference areas. The local elementary school is even named for it. Ask anyone in the know, and they’ll tell you it carries as much of baseball’s history as anywhere outside of Cooperstown.

Next year, it will have a new name. Just like that, it’ll belong to a new team, and the Dodgers will be closer to their LA home in a new complex in Arizona.

I’m hardly one qualified to speak to its history—every major media outlet has covered the move from every possible angle, yet I felt compelled to go and find my own story there.

My friends and I joke about our sports mecca, some place that overwhelms us with its presence until we feel like we’re that nine-year-old sitting in the stands with his glove again. For some reason, I felt like this would be mine. News of the move gave me that irrational sense of outrage that I’d long thought I’d distanced myself from. I was angry that my team was leaving 60 years of tradition that I’d never been a part of.

I’ve long considered myself a hyper-rational sports fan—I’ve avoided hero worship since I was 12 years old and figured out that athletes are generally ordinary personalities with incredible physical gifts. I’m quick to detach from a player at the end of his career, when winning dictates the need for new blood. For me, the simple sentimentality of baseball culture has faced a quick and (mostly) painless death at the hands of logic.

Dodgertown is a place entirely devoted to hero worship—even the streets are named for players. So by all accounts, I should have been for the move. The decision is based on simple finances—it doesn’t make sense for a team to train 3,000 miles from its fanbase. That money would, at least partially, fund more talent for the team—maybe the difference between a win or two. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something wrong.

Maybe it had to do with the atmosphere—spring training is oddly serene. Only a few people shout, most lose track of the score, and opposing players are best friends for the day. Fans picnic in grassy hills where the bleachers should be, the beer’s slightly cheaper, and if you’re lucky enough to be right by the field (we were), players gladly sign balls and chat up fans.

Compared to Legends Field (renamed as “George M. Steinbrenner Field” in 2008), the Yankees’ training home that we would see the following day, Dodgertown represented the best of baseball. Kids having a catch with their dads, eight-year-olds scrambling for autographs of players they barely knew—it was the all-American deal that makes the sport such an enduring part of society. Legends was cold and impersonal, not much different from a Major League park. There wasn’t that intimacy, the sprawling terrain to stroll about. The practice fields were shielded from fans’ view, and it was clear that you came for the game and then left. I worry that Arizona will be the same.

Vero set up a strange tension between my better judgment and my younger self, and I never did resolve it.

It was fitting—I was trying to come to terms with a move that had nothing to do with me, and I had that same sort of struggle that Dodgertown has with itself. You see, the same heroes worshipped within the grounds were shunned outside, rejected by a town deeply rooted in segregation. Hall-of-Famers they may have been, but they weren’t quite good enough to spend time in the city. Much of the complex was built for the players, so they could avoid the humiliation of traveling to other towns for entertainment.

Leaving the stadium, I stopped to buy a few t-shirts for friends. The woman behind the register looked to be at least 75, probably older, and it was clear she was a veteran of many springs. Someone struck up a conversation with her, and she remarked that not much mattered—in a day she wouldn’t have a job anyway. There was a hint of bitterness in her voice, but it quickly dissipated, and she once again smiled and continued folding shirts into the bag.

We went home, folded our own shirts, and left. The next day, the Dodgers did the same.