With all the off-season crap that pushed real baseball news off of the front page, it is nice to be getting down to actual baseball. One of the most melancholy stories of '08 Spring Training is the final spring in Vero Beach for the Dodgers. After 61 years in what is belovedly known as Dodgertown, the Boys in Blue are moving their spring operations to Glendale, Arizona next year and are effectively ending the final link of the Brooklyn Dodgers 50 years after the team moved to LA. Dodger fan-dom aside, this is one of the must-see spots in all of baseball. Players close enough to reach out and touch (who also walk to the stadium with the fans), a very simple scoreboard with no bells and whistles, it is baseball how it should be played. March 17th looms as the last game, and while another team may move in (Orioles and Reds have been mentioned), it will never be the same place that hosted everyone such icons as Jackie Robinson, Kirk Gibson, and Mike Piazza, through today's stars like Russell Martin and James Loney. It will be missed. For some great pictures, click here.
In happier notes, the Dodgers announced that Dodgers legendary manager Tommy Lasorda will manage 8 games in Spring Training while Joe Torre takes the other half of the team to China for exhibition games. Tommy managed LA for 20 years, and it will nice to see him back in the dugout for the first time since '96.
2 comments:
COOL!!!!
Stuff like this is disheartening. I hate to see people relegate history and tradition to the backseat for new ways to increase revenue stream. New stadiums (or Spring Training facilities here) are overrated, except for the Nationals, as RFK is awful. Imagaine the day when there will no longer be baseball in Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, and Wrigley Field. I am sure that that day is much closer than most of us want to believe.
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