Memories of Dodgertown

If you ever attended a Dodger exhibition game at Holman Stadium in Vero Beach, you’ve experienced the special nature of the spring-training complex known for decades as Dodgertown. This article originally appeared in the USA TODAY Spring Training Preview. Used by permission.

Text and photos by Joe Mock
All rights reserved

VERO BEACH, FLORIDA  Affectionately called “Oisk” by Brooklynites, Carl Erskine was a dominant pitcher during the heyday of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s. His first Major League spring training was in 1948, the same year the Dodgers moved their springtime operations to an abandoned Naval base in Vero Beach, Florida.

Now 94, Erskine’s memory of that spring is as sharp as ever. “When we got there in ’48, the complex was in the same condition as when the Navy used it. It had the same buildings and mess hall. Every bug who ever lived in Florida was in those barracks.”

The practice facilities weren’t much better. “It was like a jungle,” he says. “They scattered some diamonds around, but there weren’t any paved roads. When we’d walk from field to field, the guy in the front had to carry a fungo bat to kill the snakes on the path. And when a ball rolled into the tall grass, you wouldn’t reach in to get it because you didn’t know what would bite you.”

The facilities improved and so did the team, as they won five National League pennants in the first nine years they trained in Vero Beach. Erskine has many happy memories of those times – “and one very unpleasant memory,” he recalls. “There was a city ordinance that no Black people could spend the night in Vero Beach. Our Black players had to spend the night up the road in Gifford, and I didn’t like that at all.”

That included Jackie Robinson, who’d broken the color barrier in the Majors the year before the Dodgers arrived in Vero Beach.

Now, almost three-quarters of a century later, the sprawling grounds in Vero Beach are fittingly called The Jackie Robinson Training Complex.

Boy in a toy store

The complex came to be known as Dodgertown. Even though the franchise moved their regular-season home from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958, the beautiful setting and accessible facilities in Vero Beach kept the team coming back every spring for another five decades until they moved to Glendale, Arizona in 2009.

To boys growing up on the streets of Brooklyn in the 1940s and ‘50s, the beaches of Florida seemed like a mystical place they might never see for themselves. “All of the time when I was growing up, it was my ambition to one day go see the Dodgers in spring training,” says 84-year-old Sal LaRocca, a Brooklyn native who now lives in Montville, New Jersey.

In 1982, the 46 year old and his wife were vacationing at Walt Disney World when LaRocca realized that Vero Beach was just 90 minutes away. It was June, so spring training had long since ended, but that didn’t stop the couple from making the drive. As luck would have it, the Dodgers’ Florida State League team had a home game that evening at Holman Stadium, the same park where the big league club played its spring exhibitions.

“I was like a little boy in a toy store,” he happily recalls. “I was finally at the place I’d read about all of my life.”

The following March, he was back at Dodgertown to see the Boys in Blue play exhibition games. From that point on, he didn’t miss a spring training through 2008, their last spring before moving West. “And I found out that the Dodgers held fantasy camps there every November, so I went to 19 of those camps all told.” He was inducted into the camp’s Hall Of Fame in 1994.

At those camps, he became friends with his boyhood hero, Hall Of Fame outfielder Duke Snider. “When I was a kid, I used to ask him for autographs outside of Ebbets Field. He never turned down anyone who asked him to sign something. Then getting to know him as an adult, he never disappointed me. He couldn’t have been nicer, and he had a great, dry sense of humor.”

LaRocca says his fondest memory is getting to play fantasy-camp games in Holman Stadium, “standing on the same ground where Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Duke and so many others played. It was like I was walking in their footsteps. I really miss those days.”

The common denominator

During the 61 years that the Dodgers trained here, their cumulative regular-season record was 5,271-4,376, a .546 winning percentage. That’s by far the best mark in the National League for that period.

Even when the team moved to LA, their success in the standings continued. Mark Langill, since 1994 the Dodgers’ team historian, also penned the book “Dodgertown” about the complex in Vero Beach. He looks at the team’s winning ways from 1948 through 2008 this way: “It’s just remarkable, remarkable consistency in terms of that whole timeline. And what’s the common denominator? The teams always had Vero Beach.”

While hurlers like Don Sutton (233 wins), Don Drysdale (209) and Sandy Koufax (165) were responsible for a lot of victories during those years, did the Dodgers’ spring training home play a role in the team’s success? “Absolutely,” asserts Langill. “Players come and go, but a team’s institutions remain, and Dodgertown was a constant for the franchise.”

Langill notes that Walter O’Malley, the franchise’s owner throughout the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, resisted the idea of moving spring training to Arizona to be closer to the team’s California fan base. Staying on the East Coast allowed him to socialize with his New York friends and business associates who would join him in Vero Beach each March.

Walter’s son Peter took over the Dodgers when his father passed away in 1979. He remained owner and president of the team until 1998. Twenty years later, he assumed the operational responsibilities of Dodgertown, so its fields could continue to be used for tournaments and travel teams.

“Peter had personal connections to the place,” notes Langill. “He grew up there and on the beaches nearby. When he was a teenager, he was a counselor at the Dodgertown summer camps.”

“Mr. O’Malley was basically trying to keep the facility alive,” explains Rachelle Madrigal (see photo below), who currently serves as the complex’s Managing Director. “He had this vision that it should always have a place in baseball, because he didn’t want this jewel of a facility to lose its legacy.”

Fitting name

One of the organizations that used the facility for tournaments was Major League Baseball. Madrigal notes that since MLB had a great appreciation for Dodgertown’s historic impact as the first desegregated complex in the sport, they developed a “bigger vision” for the facility.

“There are so many underrepresented and underserved youth out there that (MLB) wanted to help and provide resources to,” she explains. “They saw that this could be a hub for baseball and softball developmental events.”

In January 2019, MLB assumed operational control of Dodgertown from O’Malley and changed the facility’s name to the Jackie Robinson Training Complex. In making the announcement, Commissioner Rob Manfred noted that emphasis would be on the “development of the diverse collection of young men and women who are the future of our game.”

Madrigal says the complex’s new name couldn’t be more fitting. “Not only are we supporting these kids in their development on the field, but we’re also helping to build their character. That ties into Jackie’s legacy, which is so much related to his character.”

While COVID caused the cancellation of most of last year’s activities, this year the complex plans to host tournaments and events for players as young as Little League age and as old as, well, their 80s.

That’s because the LADABC (an organization not affiliated with the Dodgers) is planning a fantasy-camp gathering for November to coincide with the 40^th anniversary of the team’s World Championship in 1981. A number of players on that squad will be present, as will past participants in fantasy camps at Dodgertown – some in their 70s and 80s. (Go to LADABC.com if you’re interested in attending the camp or to learn more about the organization.)

“I enjoy hosting fantasy camps because they really bring another level of passion for the game,” admits Madrigal. “They get to experience what it was like to be a player here, so they appreciate the legacy and the whole culture of Dodgertown.”