Thursday, April 23, 2009

VERO BEACH — Minor League Baseball executives expect to occupy Dodgertown by June 1 if they can get an agreement with county officials approved by then.

“They want to occupy Dodgertown as soon as possible and we want them there,” County Administrator Joe Baird said Thursday.

At this point, the two sides’ attorneys are poring through the proposed agreement.

“And that takes on a life of its own,” MiLB President Pat O’Conner said.

Neither Baird nor O’Conner envisioned anything holding up the deal. And at least the county won’t have to spruce up the grounds before MiLB moves in, Baird said.

“The fields are already in great shape,” Baird said. “It’s a turnkey operation. They are ready to be played. … And you can thank the employees we hired from the (Los Angeles) Dodgers.”

Sometime in the next six months, he said, residents may see one change taking place — the installation of lights on two of Dodgertown’s four half-size practice fields. The remaining two are to be lighted in 2010. The County Commission has budgeted $1.1 million for the improvement.

The practice fields are only infield segments and the Dodgers would use them in daylight, O’Conner said. And he wants to make the partial adult fields into full-size Little League fields, complete with outfields and provide for nighttime play.

Then they would be played, along with the main field in Holman Stadium, for what O’Conner says will be more baseball than Dodgertown has seen at once.

Under the Dodgers, he said, the pro team played 12 spring-training games a year and the Vero Beach Dodgers farm team played 70 games. “We might play that once a month with all five fields at the same time from dawn to dusk,” O’Conner said.

But that won’t happen quite yet. O’Conner said he has to compile a firm business schedule by contracting with the groups that would bring the youth and college teams to Dodgertown. To staff those events, he said, he wants to bring back laid-off Dodgertown employees. But he can’t do any of that until he has his contract with the county.

“It’s like buying a house,” he said. “You don’t get to paint the walls before the closing.”

Once he has the county lease, he said, he expects to spend little time inking business deals with sports groups. One idea, he said, would be contacting the Baltimore Orioles to bring spring training back to Dodgertown. But O’Conner said he has yet to make that pitch.

Another idea, he said, would bring even more irony to the new baseball venture — football games.

If O’Conner can work that deal, he said, the fledgling United Football League would start using the fields in September and maybe remain through November. The four-team football league, which plans to premier this year, is looking at possibly using Dodgertown as its training base for either all, or half, of its teams and league officials would allow the public to come out and watch the teams practice.

By Henry A. Stephens, TCPalm.com

Scripps Lighthouse

© 2009 Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers

Tags: baseball, contract, Dodgers, dodgertown, football

This entry was posted on Friday, April 24th, 2009 at 8:42 am and is filed under Community events, Economy, Sports, Treasure Coast business, Vero Beach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.