The 61st spring encampment at the former Navy base that became Dodgertown in 1948 will be the last for the Dodgers in Vero Beach, Fla., another in the chain of broken links to Brooklyn.
The Dodgers -- whose pitchers and catchers report to camp Thursday -- are slated to move to Glendale, Ariz., for spring training in 2009. Packing will be a sentimental journey for many. Nostalgia is certain to overflow.
"You think of all the great players who trained there, the era when 600 and 700 players lived in the old barracks, the intimacy with the fans, to me it's been the greatest sports complex of any in the country," eulogized Tom Lasorda, who arrived in Vero Beach as a player in that initial year and returned in virtually every baseball capacity over the ensuing six decades.
"To me, what we experienced and accomplished in Vero will never be duplicated."
A spring prototype, Dodgertown has housed a baseball panorama, from the ownership of Branch Rickey to Walter O'Malley to Frank McCourt, from Leo Durocher to new Manager Joe Torre, from the pioneering Jackie Robinson to James Loney.
The memory bank is full.
Yet there are some who still can't forgive the racism they encountered as African American players in the early years of Dodgertown ("I have no good memories," said Don Newcombe) and others who came along years later and said the six or seven weeks there had the feel of house arrest.
"You were definitely ready to break out," Eric Karros said.
Perhaps it will always be more Zero Beach than Vero Beach for some, but it has been a second home to the Dodgers, unique among all training facilities. Even if the Baltimore Orioles leave Fort Lauderdale to take up residence there next year, would Orioletown or Birdland have the same magical ring?
Would a new team be able to create its own memories amid the ghosts? What would happen to the walkways and driveways named in honor of Sandy Koufax, Vin Scully, Roy Campanella and other Dodgers bluebloods?
Dodgertown, after all, is where Campy had his corner and tutored catchers from his wheelchair and where Maury Wills still has Maury's Pit from which he gives bunting and basestealing lessons.
It is where O'Malley played poker with reporters in the press room at night, where the food was green and Wills or Tommy Hutton might play the banjo at the annual St. Patrick's Day party, and where Scully, as a young broadcaster, had a barracks room near the Western Union office from which reporters sent their stories and he could never be sure which wayward writer would stumble through at a late hour or end up in the cot next to his, unable to negotiate the darkness.
