A FAREWELL TO A SYMBOL OF VERO BEACH.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

VERO BEACH, Fla. - They held a memorial twin bill here Thursday: The funeral mass for Clem Labine, durable relief ace of Dodgers champions in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, doubled inadvertently as a tribute to Vero Beach itself, the franchise's spring home for vanishing generations.

Peter O'Malley, Sandy Koufax and Carl Erskine shared a pew. Figures of fame as obvious as Tom Lasorda and esoteric as Bump Holman dotted the church.

Rick Monday, a Vero Beach resident as Labine was, led 300 mourners in a standing ovation for the right-hander who died at 80 on March 2 after a sudden illness.

O'Malley flew in from California with his sister Terry Seidler for what he said was his first visit to Vero Beach since the family sold the team in 1998. Erskine came all the way from his home in Anderson, Ind.

The knowledge that the Dodgers plan to move to a Phoenix-area training base in two years added a layer of emotion to this funeral/reunion.

"This is a second home," Erskine, whose pitching career paralleled Labine's, said outside St. Helen Catholic Church, fiveminutes to the ocean side of Dodgertown. "When the Dodgers left Brooklyn and went to Los Angeles, there was a huge separation of the fan base and all that. But the one constant was Vero Beach. All the greats who played in Jackie Robinson's era, to the '58 season in Los Angeles, and all the greats that came since then, they all came through Dodgertown, Vero Beach. This is the link. That's why we're so antsy that it might close in a couple of years."

Erskine rode to Vero Beach with O'Malley and Seidler after their planes landed in Orlando.

"A lot of roots," O'Malley said before heading to Dodgertown for lunch. "For two hours, we reminisced. It (the Dodgers' scheduled move) is sad, I can't deny that, because we've been coming here so long. I do hope another team comes here. I think it will be a tremendous void for the community not to have a baseball team here."

Inside the church, the service was very Vero and distinctly Dodgers. It had been delayed a few days, allowing Dodgers people to attend in the afternoon before a 7 p.m. Grapefruit League game.

"The list of deceased members of the Dodgers family used to be one page. Now it's page after page after page," Rev. Monsignor Irvine Nugent said from the altar. "Clem has gone to join them today ... He has touched all the bases, and today we pray he crosses home plate into the arms of God. Amen."

Of the team that won the Dodgers' first World Series in Brooklyn in 1955, the number of players still living shrank to 11 when Labine (who had a win and a save against the Yankees) died. Koufax, Erskine and Lasorda were on hand Thursday.

So were such varied Dodgers of the past as coach Danny Ozark, scout Ralph Avila and Bump Holman -- the former team-plane pilot who is the son of Bud Holman, the businessman credited with luring the team to Vero in the first place.

For Labine, who also pitched in the 1959 World Series, the last official Dodgers act was to put on his No. 17 uniform and serve as an instructor at the team's fantasy camp in Vero Beach in February. He suffered a heart attack and stroke soon after.

Monday, who grew close to Labine even though their careers didn't overlap, read something from Labine's widow Barbara, who was too emotional to read it herself. It was, in part, about the nostalgic lure of Dodgertown.

"He enjoyed putting on his Dodger uniform so much," Barbara said. "It made him feel 10 years younger and two inches taller."

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