Dodger History Will Be Left on Base (NY Times)

From The New York Times:

The Dodgers are back at it again - breaking hearts as they move west.

Still notorious for a move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, the Dodgers are about leave their long-time Spring Training facility.

In a Sports of the Times article, columnist George Vescey writes of the last Spring Training for the Dodgers at Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida before they move to Phoenix next year.

The Dodgers reinvented spring training right here, modernized it from the drying-out forced marches of John McGraw and the New York Giants early in the century in rural Texas.

Billy DeLury, who started working for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950 as in the mailroom, and who went on to become traveling secretary for the Los Angeles Dodgers (1979-2002) gave Vescey a tour of Dodgertown - with its streets named after the likes of Jackie Robinson and Walter Alston.

"It makes sense,” Vescey quoted DeLury as mixing nostalgia and business sense. “People on the East Coast don’t have the connection with the Dodgers,” he said.

Wrote Vescey, The Dodgers hopes to sell more exhibition tickets to people from Southern California who pop over to Phoenix for a few days.

"There’s no point in melancholia", concluded Vescey. "Besides", he added, "the Dodgers have already made the biggest heartbreaking move a franchise could make".

For the complete article, see:

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/03/02/sports/baseball/02vecsey.html