Baseball and Dodgertown

Dodgertown was the spring training facility of the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers. Originally part of a World War Two Naval Air Station, it became the spring training home of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1948 after local business leader Bud Holman convinced the team to set up a spring training facility in Vero Beach. There, Dodger President Branch Rickey sought to create a baseball campus where players could live and play together. It was the South's first racially integrated spring training camp, where more than 600 players from the Brooklyn Dodgers' 26 minor league teams played, and Hall of Fame players Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella were among the first African American players to train there. In 1953, Dodger President Walter O'Malley privately built the 6,500-seat Holman Stadium, a state-of-the-art ballpark at Dodgertown. Over its history, six world championships and fourteen National League pennant-winning teams played there. In 2001, the Dodgers sold Dodgertown to Indian River County, then leased it back until 2008, when their spring training facilities moved west to Arizona. In 2012, the O'Malley family began managing historic Dodgertown as a year-round multisports complex.

Vero Beach, Florida · United States