Dodgertown is closing not a spring too soon

In a couple of weeks, I will embark on an annual rite of passage scented with hope, tinted in promise, an enduring fabric as lovely as all spring.

I will take a five-hour flight on a cramped plane from Los Angeles to Orlando, Fla.

I will rent a car large enough to ward off suitcase-sized bugs.

I will drive that car 90 minutes through darkened, swamp-lined roads to a town that is closed.

I will check into a steamy living space that costs $250 a night.

The next morning, I will drive to an outdated baseball village where players don't like to stay, and fans don't like to watch them.

Ah, the romance of Dodgers spring training in Vero Beach.

Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack, I don't care if I ever get back.

No, seriously. I don't care.

I'll happily quaff the shells and caramel corn all the way to Glendale, Ariz., where the Dodgers are moving at the end of spring, for good, forever, amen.

The Dodgers had 51 wonderful years in Dodgertown.

The problem is, they've been there 61 years.

Those good old days are long gone, and it only makes sense that the Dodgers disappear with them.

Like an aging Brooklyn snowbird exchanging blank stares with a kid Los Angeles outfielder, the Dodgers and Vero Beach no longer fit.

The Dodgers don't have many fans there. Their players no longer feel a connection there. Those 10-a.m.-back-home game broadcasts feel alien from there.

Dodgertown has become less a "town" than a museum.

The organization had become more tourists than winter residents.

When I was negotiating for a reasonable room this spring, my 19th in Vero Beach, an agent pumped up a flat rate with astronomical fees.

When I told her I could never ask my newspaper to pay those kinds of fees, she said, "That's the way it is with all you people. It's always too expensive for you people. You people should look somewhere else."

You people? You newspaper people? You tourist people?

"You Dodger people," she said.

If she was angry that the Dodgers are leaving, I don't blame her. This will be an angry spring for many locals.

But her words belied an attitude I've felt for years.

I can't imagine anyone in Mesa, Ariz., condescendingly referring to Chicagoans as, "You Cub people."

That team belongs in its spring-training site, which looks and sounds and feels like it.