Editor, Dodger Dugout

The Dodgers new home at Camelback Ranch-Glendale is a couple of things. First of all, it isn’t Dodgertown at Vero Beach. And second, it is the most complete baseball complex in all of baseball, constructed in an amazingly beautiful area.

Dodgertown in Vero Beach was born in 1948 with the Brooklyn club playing their Montreal farm club, with Hall of Famers Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider and Roy Campanella. This, and the rest of the history surrounding the storied site, is the part of the first Dodgertown that can never be duplicated.

Having said that, it would be hard to imagine how you could design a more esthetically-perfect facility than the $113 million Camelback Ranch.

Despite sportswriter Bill Plaschke’s tongue-in-cheek criticism that there were no Dodger Dogs, the new location follows close the old song, “where never was heard, a discouraging word, and the skies were not cloudy all day.”

In fact, the operative word for most who got their first look at the place on March 1 was an almost universal “Wow.”

The area has the look of a college campus, one that encompasses some 141 acres of pure baseball. There are 12 practice fields, four for the major leaguers and eight for the minor league players. The Dodgers and White Sox, who share the complex, each have a 50,000 square foot team support building. There are separate buildings for the Dodgers major and minor league teams and combined facilities for the White Sox squads.

Players leave the clubhouse by a tunnel that exits onto the field or down a pathway that leads to the practice fields, the latter allowing fan access to the players much like Vero Beach

The rust-colored complex, designed to make it look like it has been there for a long time, in reality went from ground-breaking in November of 2007 to ready for prime time in a remarkable 15 months instead of the predicted 21 months. In fact, it was ready for the two teams to occupy in the middle of February when pitchers and catchers reported.

Some 900 workers accomplished the admirable construction feat and were still working when the Dodgers and White Sox opened their exhibition seasons—-on the road, of course.

This Arizona training camp is skillfully blended in with natural stone veneers, faux staining, Gabion wall systems and earth-tone stadium seat covers making the entire complex mix into the area as naturally as to the desert itself and the mountains that rise prominently all around.

The public access areas, the 1,300-foot lake system, landscaping and practice fields, were completed first before the focus turned to finishing the stadium itself for the March 1 opening date.

As for the crown jewel, a 13,100-seat stadium, it features a playing field sunken 12 feet below grade and seating 12 feet above grade for perfect sight lines. It includes 3,000 lawn seats, 12 luxury suites and party deck overlooking the field, all accessed by a unique center field rotunda.

The outfield walls are longer than at Dodger Stadium, but the dimensions of the major practice field is exactly the same.

Dodgers vice president of communications Josh Rawich says that the complex is “functionally complete,” but points out it is somewhat of a work in progress. “We’ve gone to great lengths to preserve history,” he said. “We didn’t want to throw the street signs we brought from Vero Beach and things like that up willy-nilly without giving it real thought, and they will make their way up over time.”

There are minor complaints. The field faces an unusual direction to allow a view of the mountain range to the south. That puts the sun directly in the faces of many along the third base line as well as those in the pressbox who are perhaps a bit more vocal. And, fans who sit in the grass behind the outfield, one of the best seats in the house, cannot see a scoreboard.

So, in essence, the complex is certainly not Vero Beach, but then Ebbets Field is not Dodger Stadium and if there were octogenarians still about, they would say Ebbets Field was not Washington Park where the Bridegrooms and Superbas played.

Memory makes the past more palatable by forgetting the inconveniences. As for the nostalgia that is essentially missing in the gorgeous new place, Manny Mota has an answer.

“We just have to be here for 50 years. That’s what makes history.”