Dodgers, sunshine brighten February in Vero Beach
JAY CLARKE
Dodgers, sunshine brighten February in Vero Beach
By JAY CLARKE
Sunday, February 8, 2004
Vero Beach, Fla. — Later this month, an enduring tradition returns to this chic Atlantic coast city halfway between Palm Beach and Cape Canaveral. That’s when baseball’s spring training begins.
This is a special time for the sport’s fans because of the homey atmosphere that surrounds the practice sessions and games.
Fans sit or stand just a few feet from the players, often exchanging small talk with them. There’s a better chance of getting a player to autograph a ball during spring training, and there’s the excitement of watching young players develop and assessing the team’s chances for a World Series berth.
That’s true at any of Florida’s many spring-training sites, but Vero’s Dodgertown is special. Fans have long enjoyed a close relationship with the Dodgers, who have practiced here every year since 1948.
Unlike most other ballparks, the players at Dodgertown’s Holman Field sit on open benches in front of the stands, not inside dugouts, so they’re more accessible to fans. If they choose, spectators can watch games from a grassy knoll just behind the outfield.
And Dodgertown has always been unique among the spring-training camps because it’s much more than a baseball diamond. The complex, whose roads are named after Dodger players, also encompasses a hotel and conference center. With the sale of the land to the city a couple of years back, the Dodgers built a new clubhouse and practice facilities.
Old Florida
Dodgertown lies in the western reaches of Vero Beach, far from the coast that made the city a popular winter resort area. But even on the beach, among the elegant subdivisions and hotels that have arisen over the years, traces of Old Florida remain.
Most visible of those are two beachfront structures built by Vero Beach eccentric Waldo Emerson Sexton. When Sexton built the Driftwood Inn and Ocean Grill in the 1930s, he slapped them together with pieces of driftwood and other material that came his way. He didn’t bother with architectural and engineering plans. He just told workers where to put what.
Still standing
Today the two weathered-wood buildings, punctuated with dozens of bells, Tiffany lamps and other oddments that Sexton picked up at estate auctions and flea markets, are still standing and very much in business — a tribute to their durability.
Their funky appearance presents quite a contrast to the rest of the svelte beach area. Vero officials say one subdivision, John’s Island, is the third most-affluent sector in the United States after Palm Springs and Scottsdale.
Palatial winter homes are one thing, but Vero Beach also offers much to the casual visitor. Its broad beach has a good choice of hotels, classy boutiques and cozy cafes, a huge outlet mall, excellent cultural facilities and a setting of great natural beauty.
The nation’s first national monument, for one, lies just offshore. The Pelican Island Wildlife Refuge, designated a monument in 1903 by President Theodore Roosevelt, is the nesting site for 16 species of birds, including brown pelicans, wood storks, ibises, spoonbills, egrets, herons and magnificent frigate birds.
Humans aren’t allowed on the island, but boat tours that circle it depart from Inlet Marina and Sebastian Inlet State Park. The new Centennial Trail boardwalk and observation platform, built in 2003 for the preserve’s 100th anniversary, provide a land-based viewing site.
Vero’s shore also is the destination for hundreds of nesting turtles. Up-late visitors can watch the giant sea creatures — many weigh hundreds of pounds — swim ashore at night from April to September to lay their pingpong-ball-sized eggs in the sand beyond the high-water mark.
Pelicans and turtles aren’t the only sea treasures here. Below the ocean’s surface lies a cache of gold, silver and precious stones carried on Spanish galleons that sank during a hurricane in 1715. Visitors can gaze at some of the breathtaking jewelry and ingots of silver and gold recovered from the wrecks at two local museums, the McLarty and Mel Fisher Treasure museums.
On shore, an oasis of uncommon natural beauty recently reopened here. The former McKee’s Jungle Gardens, a 1950s roadside attraction, has been resurrected after lying fallow for 27 years. Now titled the McKee Botanical Garden, it is smaller but still retains acres of lush foliage, ponds, streams, stands of bamboo and tall cabbage palms.
On the cultural side, Vero’s Riverside Theater stages concerts and plays, including upcoming performances this winter by Lou Rawls, Marvin Hamlisch, the Four Freshmen, Robert Wagner and Jill St. John. The Vero Beach Museum of the Arts, largest in the region, mounts permanent and traveling exhibits and displays large works in a new sculpture garden.
But perhaps the most unusual feature in Vero Beach is simply a dirt road, the 7-mile-long Jungle Trail. Listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, it runs along the banks of Indian River Lagoon, in some places flanked by cabbage palms and citrus trees, and in others by old cracker houses.
It doesn’t look like much, but saving this shore from developers is one of the city’s proudest accomplishments.
For more information: Indian River County Chamber of Commerce, (772) 567-3491 or www.vero-beach.fl.us/chamber.
Universal Press Syndicate
Copyright 2004 Journal Sentinel Inc.