Dodgertown

Spring’s Eternal at Dodgertown

The Sporting News list of 100 Most Powerful People in Sports for the 20th Century, December 1999

  1. Pete Rozelle
  2. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis
  3. Roone Arledge
  4. Branch Rickey
  5. Marvin Miller
  6. David Stern
  7. Rupert Murdoch
  8. Avery Brundage
  9. Ban Johnson
  10. Muhammad Ali
  11. Walter O’Malley
  12. Steve Borstein
  13. Phil Knight
  14. George Halas
  15. Babe Ruth
  16. Walter Byers
  17. Lamar Hunt
  18. Ted Turner
  19. Paul Brown
  20. Michael Jordan
  21. Jackie Robinson
  22. Pierre De Coubertin
  23. Juan Antonio Samaranch
  24. Donald Fehr
  25. Tex Rickard
  26. Roy Hofheinz
  27. Horst Dassler
  28. Red Auerbach
  29. Bill France Sr.
  30. Arnold Palmer
  31. Al Davis
  32. Birch Bayh
  33. Billie Jean King
  34. Paul Tagliabue
  35. Charlie Finley
  36. Clarence Campbell
  37. George Steinbrenner
  38. Peter Ueberroth
  39. Bert Bell
  40. Jacob Ruppert
  41. Dick Ebersol
  42. Mark McCormack
  43. Al Neuharth
  44. Tex Schramm
  45. Bill Veeck
  46. Arthur Ashe
  47. Howard Cosell
  48. Fathers Theodore Hesburgh and William Beauchamp
  49. Don King
  50. Connie Mack
  1. David Falk
  2. John Wooden
  3. Andre Laguerre
  4. August Busch Jr.
  5. Peter Seitz
  6. Roger Penske
  7. Wilt Chamberlain
  8. Jack Nicklaus
  9. Bill France Jr.
  10. Bowie Kuhn
  11. George Preston Marshall
  12. Ed Barrow
  13. Abe Saperstein
  14. John McGraw
  15. Larry MacPhail
  16. Dick Schultz
  17. Gary Bettman
  18. Adolph Rupp
  19. Walter Brown
  20. Jesse Owens
  21. Deane Beman
  22. Phog Allen
  23. Wellington Mara
  24. Charles Comiskey
  25. Eddie Robinson
  26. Knute Rockne
  27. Arch Ward
  28. Jerry Jones
  29. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
  30. Bobby Orr
  31. Art Rooney
  32. Alan Eagleson
  33. Pele
  34. Bud Selig
  35. Tommie Smith and John Carlos
  36. Pat Summit
  37. Laurence Tisch
  38. Bobby Jones
  39. Tiger Woods
  40. Leigh Steinberg
  41. Henry Iba
  42. Bill Bowerman
  43. Anatoli Tarasov
  44. Albert “Happy” Chandler
  45. “The Voices of Baseball” — Mel Allen, Red Barber, Vin Scully, Harry Caray, Jack Buck, Ernie Harwell,Bob Prince, Etc.
  46. Sonny Werblin
  47. Ed and Steve Sabol
  48. J.G. Taylor Spink and C.C. Johnson Spink
  49. Wayne Gretzky
  50. The Famous Chicken
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ABC Sports ranks the Top Ten Most Influential People "off the field" in sports history as voted by the Sports Century panel in December, 1999

  1. Branch Rickey
  2. Pete Rozelle
  3. Roone Arledge
  4. Marvin Miller
  5. Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis
  6. David Stern
  7. Avery Brundage
  8. Walter O’Malley
  9. George Halas
  10. Mark McCormack
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Attendance 1953-1957 Brooklyn Dodgers vs. Milwaukee Braves

Attendance 1953-1957 Brooklyn Dodgers vs. Milwaukee Braves
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E.J. “Buzzie” Bavasi, then the General Manager of the Dodgers’ minor league Nashua, NH club, was dispatched to Florida to meet with Holman and other civic officials about the plan of converting the Naval base into a spring training camp on November 2, 1947. The 31-year-old Bavasi, who arrived by train, was also to meet with representatives of neighboring Fort Pierce and Stuart the following day to review alternate training sites. The Vero Beach hospitality committee was so overwhelming that Bavasi ended up at a “stag” party on the Holman’s ranch and he spent the night there.

“To make a long story short, I never made it to Fort Pierce or Stuart,” recalled Bavasi.Dodger Edition, Vero Beach Press Journal, March 1, 2002 “Bud Holman met me at the train and he wouldn’t let me go any farther south. The facilities were already there. All we had to do was put in the ball fields. Another thing was having the airport so close. We had our own plane then and we could walk from the airport to the offices. The other places were trying to sell us something. Vero Beach was trying to give us something.”Bill Boeding, Vero Beach Press-Journal, February 20, 1988

Holman had a dilemma when the Naval Air Base which had been used for a training field, was given back to the city of Vero after World War II. He was one of a handful of residents who had originally established the airport in 1929. Born in Versailles, KY on September 18, 1900, Holman opened his successful Vero Beach Cadillac Company in 1925. In 1932, Holman had convinced Eastern Air Lines to make Vero’s airport a fueling stop. Holman and Postmaster J.J. Schumann were instrumental in obtaining direct air mail service for the community in 1935, making it the smallest U.S. city to have the service.

Almost overnight, the airport and Vero Beach became a military community during World War II, after the Navy quickly put up housing on the land where Dodgertown was eventually to stand. Youthful fliers filled not only the skies, but the small Vero Beach land, as well. Dances, parties, church services and hymn sings were held for the military men in the community. Sadly, several were killed in training exercises in defense of the United States. By 1945, the city received the land and training facility back from the U.S. Government under the terms “that any use of the facilities was subject to federal approval and any funds acquired from use or sale of the airbase property must be retained in a special fund and applied exclusively to the maintenance or development of flight facilities.”Joe Hendrickson, Dodgertown The innovative Holman wanted to find a use for the barracks and the base, thus the idea of the Brooklyn Dodgers with all of their farm teams seemed like a feasible solution.

Holman had met with newly-elected Mayor Merrill Barber about the use of the site. They decided to call upon Rickey and ask him to take a tour. The follow-up site inspection by Bavasi was the clincher.

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  • E.J. “Buzzie” Bavasi, general manager of the Dodgers’ minor league team in Nashua, NH, traveled by train to Vero Beach to meet with Bud Holman and other civic officials about the possibility of making the former U.S. Naval Air Station the spring training camp for the Dodgers on Nov. 2, 1947. Dodger President Branch Rickey asked Bavasi to review Vero Beach and other Florida cities as spring training sites.E.J. “Buzzie” Bavasi, general manager of the Dodgers’ minor league team in Nashua, NH, traveled by train to Vero Beach to meet with Bud Holman and other civic officials about the possibility of making the former U.S. Naval Air Station the spring training camp for the Dodgers on Nov. 2, 1947. Dodger President Branch Rickey asked Bavasi to review Vero Beach and other Florida cities as spring training sites.
  • The barracks, which had neither heat for the cold nights nor air conditioning for the humid days, were two stories high on stilts.The barracks, which had neither heat for the cold nights nor air conditioning for the humid days, were two stories high on stilts.