RITE OF SPRING DODGERS ARE READY TO BID ADIEU TO TRIANING COMPLEX IN VERO BEACH, WHERE GENERATIONS OF BROOKLYN AND L.A. STARS WERE BURNISHED.

Byline: MATT McHALE

Staff WRITER

For 60 years, springtime in Vero Beach, Fla., meant standing by the batting cage watching the fury of Jackie Robinson and Mike Piazza hitting baseballs. It also meant standing beside Jo Lasorda in a laundry room at 10 o'clock on a Tuesday night as she washed the manager's socks.

Dodgertown was pitching machines, sliding pits and rundown drills. It also was the camaraderie of pool parties, card games and St.Patrick's Day dinners that helped build 25 players into a team.

It was the place that molded the Boys of Summer, then Koufax and Drysdale, later Garvey and Lopes, and finally Eric Gagne and Russell Martin.

"When you moved about that camp," legendary Dodger broadcaster Red Barber once said, "you knew you were in the heart of baseball."

When pitchers and catchers report Thursday to spring training, it will mark the beginning of the Dodgers' final year in Florida.

Dodgertown, which began in post-war America as the vision of baseball's great emancipator Branch Rickey, was perfected by the dynamic owner Walter O'Malley and expanded by his son Peter.

The Dodgers are moving next season to train at an $80 million facility in Glendale, Ariz. They will be closer to their fans, who for all these years have based their spring memories on imagination and Sunday morning TV games with Vin Scully.

Since 1948, thousands of players, including 12 Hall of Famers, passed through the citrus and eucalyptus trees of the tiny seaside town 2 1/2 hours north of Miami. Some made it to Brooklyn and LosAngeles and achieved baseball immortality. Most didn't.

"There was a lot of pressure, being a kid from Indiana, suddenly pitching at Ebbets Field against teams like the Giants and Yankees," said Carl Erskine, also a member of the first Dodgers team in LosAngeles. "But you still had to focus on the task at hand because you knew the following spring 200 other pitchers were going to be in Vero Beach."

That sense of competition brought a sense of community.

From the time the Dodgers first arrived until the early 1970s, they were housed in a converted military barracks that was freezing at night in mid-February and blistering by the end of March.

The Spartan facilities were credited with helping build unity for the Brooklyn Dodgers teams that went to the World Series six times in eight seasons in the 1940s and '50s.

It also was the backdrop for great social change in the country, the integration of baseball.

Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947. The Dodgers trained that year in Havana, Cuba.

The Deep South was a difficult transition for Robinson, and the city of Vero Beach could be forbidding. Even the grandstand at the Dodgertown ballpark, Holman Stadium, was not integrated until 1962.

Robinson and his wife, Rachel, who both grew up in Southern California, struggled with the surroundings. But in the barracks, the dining room and the ball fields, white and black players were together.

"There," two-time batting champion Tommy Davis said, "you were only segregated by talent."

In 1953, when the Dodgers added their fifth black player in JimGilliam, city fathers grew uncomfortable and hinted the team might not be asked back the following year.

Buzzie Bavasi, a young executive who served as Dodgers general manager from 1951-68, hatched a plan to show just how much money the Dodgers' presence meant to the city.

He had Dodgertown employees stamp "Brooklyn Dodgers" on $25,000 in cash, closed the dining room and sent the player into town for the weekend.

The message was received, and the Dodgers came back in 1954.

Part of Rickey's innovation was creating a college environment that got players ready for the big leagues as quickly as possible.

Occasionally, that meant changing positions, which came to be known as "coconut snatching."

Maury Wills was a minor-league pitcher and not much of a prospect. One spring, he walked to the mound and was joined by dozens of pitchers. He looked at shortstop and saw 25 players. He looked at second base and saw two.

Seeing opportunity at a position with less competition, Wills ran to second base. He later moved to shortstop and became one of the most dynamic players of the 1960s. Wills was named the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1962 after stealing a then-record 104 bases.

The Dodgers continued the tradition in 1970, most notably with the move of minor-league outfielders Davey Lopes and Bill Russell to the infield.

Lopes and Russell wound up becoming the Dodgers' double-play combination for 11 years, helping the club win four pennants and a World Series in 1981.

"It was one of the hardest things I ever had to do," said Russell, still wincing at the memory.

In a competitive setting like Dodgertown, not all the stories had happy endings.

Left-hander Karl Spooner, who struck out 27 batters during two late- season shutouts in 1954, injured his arm during spring training in 1955 and appeared in just two more major-league games.

Ralph Branca, who gave up the Bobby Thomson "Shot Heard Round the World" that cost the Dodgers the pennant in 1951, slipped off a chair playing Monopoly the next spring and injured his pelvis. His career never recovered.

Fernando Valenzuela, perhaps the most popular player in L.A. Dodgers history, was released at Dodgertown in 1991.

Valenzuela had a shoulder injury several doctors thought was equal to the problems that forced teammate Orel Hershiser to undergo radical reconstructive surgery. But Valenzuela would not allow them to operate.

"That was such a sad, sad day," Hall of Fame broadcaster Jaime Jarrin said. "I thought he would stay forever."

A year earlier, Jarrin nearly lost his life in a spring training auto accident. He remained in Vero Beach for fourmonths recuperating after the team headed back to LosAngeles. He said he has never forgotten the way townspeople came by to check his progress.

"It was a very difficult time, but they made it so much better for my wife, Blanca, and me," he said.

But even some of the scary moments have softened with time.

Bobby Castillo, a product of Lincoln Heights who won 38 games in nine big-league seasons, is best known for a spring-training incident in 1981, when he drove a car off a bridge near Dodgertown.

He survived but was pitching in Minnesota the next year. The structure is still called the Bobby Castillo Bridge.

"It's been so long, people think they named a bridge after me because I was good," he said last week.

In recent years, the crowds have thinned, the luster of a marquee franchise diminished by 20 years without a World Series title. Most of the old Brooklyn fans who used to visit every spring are gone.

The New York Mets built a training facility a half-hour south in Port St. Lucie. The Washington Nationals are based an hour north in Viera.

The Baltimore Orioles could be the new tenants by this time next year. But the Dodgers held a fantasy camp last week and might have another in November.

Sandy Koufax, who lives in Vero Beach much of the year, was a no-show, but his name still resonates as much as ever.

In spring 1986, 20 years after he was forced to retire because of arthritis in his pitching elbow, Koufax started to throw again. At age 50.

There on a back mound, the man who is arguably the greatest left-handed pitcher of all-time brought back his high leg kick and blistering fastball. By the end of spring training he hit 90 mph on a radar gun.

"It absolutely stopped the camp," said Jerry Reuss, a Dodgers left- hander at the time.

As great a pitcher as he was, Koufax is an equally talented student of the game. He would often come to spring training, make a few adjustments to a pitcher's delivery and vanish.

Last spring, Jay Howell, the closer for the Dodgers' 1988 championship team, made a rare visit.

As he left, Howell recounted how Koufax once suggested he change his grip on the ball.

"It added six years to my career," he said. "I never got the chance to say thank you."

That was the power of Koufax. The magic of one generation teaching the next. And the beauty of Dodgertown.

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CAPTION(S):

13 photos, box

Photo:

(1) Manager Walter Alston sits atop the Dodgertown sign in the 1970s as players such as Steve Garvey, Bill Russell and Ron Cey arrive for spring training.

(2 -- color) Street signs around the spring-training complex salute Dodgers greats, such as broadcaster Vin Scully.

(3) Dodgers catchers are taught the strike zone with the use of a box made of string.

(4) The Spartan facilities in Vero Beach were credited with helping build team unity.

(5) Young Dodgers catcher Mike Scioscia, now the Angels manager, gets some pointers from Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, who often would come to spring training, make a few adjustments to a pitcher's delivery and vanish.

(6) Infielders Mariano Duncan, left, and Alfredo Griffin pose for a picture.

(7) Former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda shows there still is some life left in his arm. Lasorda was a former pitcher.

(8) The intimacy of Dodgertown allowed fans to get up close to see their favorite stars, such as catcher Mike Piazza.

(9) Dodgers arrive at former naval base. Branch Rickey unveils first full-blown farm system.

(10) no caption (Sandy Koufax)

(11) no caption (Kirk Gibson)

(12) no caption (Hideo Nomo)

(13) Eric Gagne (far right with Paul Lo Duca), who set a MLB record with 84 consecutive saves, injures his elbowand makes just two appearances that season.

Box:

60 YEARS OF SPRING TRAINING IN VERO BEACH