Dodgertown
Spring’s Eternal at Dodgertown
The Sporting News list of 100 Most Powerful People in Sports for the 20th Century, December 1999
- Pete Rozelle
- Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis
- Roone Arledge
- Branch Rickey
- Marvin Miller
- David Stern
- Rupert Murdoch
- Avery Brundage
- Ban Johnson
- Muhammad Ali
- Walter O’Malley
- Steve Borstein
- Phil Knight
- George Halas
- Babe Ruth
- Walter Byers
- Lamar Hunt
- Ted Turner
- Paul Brown
- Michael Jordan
- Jackie Robinson
- Pierre De Coubertin
- Juan Antonio Samaranch
- Donald Fehr
- Tex Rickard
- Roy Hofheinz
- Horst Dassler
- Red Auerbach
- Bill France Sr.
- Arnold Palmer
- Al Davis
- Birch Bayh
- Billie Jean King
- Paul Tagliabue
- Charlie Finley
- Clarence Campbell
- George Steinbrenner
- Peter Ueberroth
- Bert Bell
- Jacob Ruppert
- Dick Ebersol
- Mark McCormack
- Al Neuharth
- Tex Schramm
- Bill Veeck
- Arthur Ashe
- Howard Cosell
- Fathers Theodore Hesburgh and William Beauchamp
- Don King
- Connie Mack
- David Falk
- John Wooden
- Andre Laguerre
- August Busch Jr.
- Peter Seitz
- Roger Penske
- Wilt Chamberlain
- Jack Nicklaus
- Bill France Jr.
- Bowie Kuhn
- George Preston Marshall
- Ed Barrow
- Abe Saperstein
- John McGraw
- Larry MacPhail
- Dick Schultz
- Gary Bettman
- Adolph Rupp
- Walter Brown
- Jesse Owens
- Deane Beman
- Phog Allen
- Wellington Mara
- Charles Comiskey
- Eddie Robinson
- Knute Rockne
- Arch Ward
- Jerry Jones
- Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.
- Bobby Orr
- Art Rooney
- Alan Eagleson
- Pele
- Bud Selig
- Tommie Smith and John Carlos
- Pat Summit
- Laurence Tisch
- Bobby Jones
- Tiger Woods
- Leigh Steinberg
- Henry Iba
- Bill Bowerman
- Anatoli Tarasov
- Albert “Happy” Chandler
- “The Voices of Baseball” — Mel Allen, Red Barber, Vin Scully, Harry Caray, Jack Buck, Ernie Harwell,Bob Prince, Etc.
- Sonny Werblin
- Ed and Steve Sabol
- J.G. Taylor Spink and C.C. Johnson Spink
- Wayne Gretzky
- The Famous Chicken
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
- Branch Rickey
- Pete Rozelle
- Roone Arledge
- Marvin Miller
- Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis
- David Stern
- Avery Brundage
- Walter O’Malley
- George Halas
- Mark McCormack
Attendance 1953-1957 Brooklyn Dodgers vs. Milwaukee Braves

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.
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.