Why the Dodgers Left Vero Beach

The Dodgers left Vero Beach after the team changed owners twice and the camp itself passed into Indian River County ownership on a lease that ended in 2008.

The MLB timeline for the Jackie Robinson Training Complex records that on March 17, 2008, the Dodgers' final major league spring training game was played at Holman Stadium, and that the Dodgers would train in Glendale, Arizona, in 2009. The Walter O’Malley history of Dodgertown puts it in one sentence: the Dodgers under the ownership of Frank McCourt pulled up their 60-year roots in Vero Beach, moving their spring headquarters to Glendale, Arizona in 2009.

The road out of Vero Beach ran through three dated steps: the 1998 sale of the club by the O'Malley family, the 2001 sale of Dodgertown to Indian River County, and the 2004 sale of the club to Frank McCourt. None of the official and team sources checked for this page gives the new owner's reasons in his own words, so this page sets out the record of what happened and when.

Ownership changes set up the move by separating the team from the land it trained on in Vero Beach.

The Dodgers' own 1990s franchise timeline says that on March 19, 1998, Major League Baseball owners approved the sale of the Dodgers from the O'Malley family to The FOX Group. The O'Malley history adds that Peter O'Malley stayed on through the rest of that year as chairman of the board, and that in 2001 Fox sold Dodgertown, land and buildings, to Indian River County. MLB dates the Indian River County purchase of the land and facilities to August 29, 2001.

The Baseball and Dodgertown state marker in Vero Beach describes the arrangement that followed: the Dodgers sold Dodgertown to Indian River County, then leased it back until 2008, when their spring training facilities moved west to Arizona. A second sale came on January 29, 2004, when, according to the Dodgers' 2000s franchise timeline, Major League Baseball unanimously approved the sale of the Dodgers to Frank McCourt.

The Dodgers moved to Camelback Ranch in Glendale, Arizona, a new complex they share with the Chicago White Sox.

MLB's Camelback Ranch page says the facility has been the spring training home of the Chicago White Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers since 2009. It sits on 141 acres at Ballpark Boulevard and Camelback Road, with more than 118,000 square feet of clubhouse space, 13 full baseball fields and three half-fields, and a main stadium with a capacity of 13,000, including 3,000 lawn seats.

Some of Vero Beach went west with the team. The Camelback Ranch page says citrus groves dot the east side of the property on the Dodgers side of the complex, describing them as a touch of old Dodgertown in Florida, Southern California and Arizona. Two of the 12 practice fields are replicas of the two teams' home ballparks, one built to the exact dimensions of Dodger Stadium.

The last Dodgers spring game in Vero Beach was played at Holman Stadium on March 17, 2008, a loss to the Houston Astros.

The MLB timeline records that the Dodgers lost that final major league spring training game to the Astros and saluted former manager Tommy Lasorda with a bat tunnel as he exited the field for the last time. The same timeline notes that Holman Stadium had already lost its minor league tenant: the Vero Beach Dodgers played their final season in the Florida State League in 2006, their 27th overall, and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays Class-A team played the first of two seasons there in 2007 as the Vero Beach Devil Rays.

The Vero Beach camp had also become a training ground for teams from Asia in its last Dodger years. MLB lists the LG Twins of South Korea at Dodgertown in 2000, and the Osaka Buffaloes of Japan's Pacific League training there in the fall of 2002 and again in 2003.

Indian River County closed Dodgertown after the Dodgers left, and Minor League Baseball reopened it in 2009 as Vero Beach Sports Village.

According to MLB, in December 2008 Indian River County officials, not sure what to do with Dodgertown without a team, decided to shutter the facility. In May 2009 Minor League Baseball agreed to operate the site as Vero Beach Sports Village, reopening it with teams, tournaments and umpire schools. The O'Malley history says Dodgertown remained shuttered for nine months before that.

The sources differ on how long the losses that followed lasted. The 2010s MLB timeline says Minor League Baseball was prepared to end operations after two years of significant losses, while the O'Malley history says two and a half years. In 2011, MLB says, Peter O'Malley, concerned about the future of the Vero Beach site and preserving the history of former Dodgertown, held discussions with Minor League Baseball president Pat O'Conner and Vero Beach Sports Village vice president Craig Callan, and that November the SK Wyverns of South Korea trained there for the first time. MLB records that on January 1, 2012, Peter O'Malley stepped forward with a partnership that included his sister Terry O'Malley Seidler, pitchers Hideo Nomo and Chan Ho Park, and Minor League Baseball, to manage Vero Beach Sports Village on a lease with Indian River County.

On June 4, 2013, that partnership signed a lease renewal with the county running to April 2019, and in August 2013 the site took the name Historic Dodgertown, Vero Beach, Florida, under a licensing agreement with the Dodgers and Major League Baseball.

The Vero Beach site kept growing under the new managers. MLB lists a cloverleaf of multi-purpose fields for girls' softball and youth baseball opened on June 14, 2012, and a new multi-purpose field completed that July near where the historic U.S. Naval Air Station barracks used to stand. Football used the campus too: the University of South Florida Bulls held their first football training camp at Vero Beach Sports Village in 2010 and returned for a fourth consecutive year in 2013.

The Dodgers had once committed to Vero Beach for decades at a time, which made the 2008 exit a sharp break.

The camp began on surplus military land. The U.S. Naval Station, Vero Beach state marker says the Vero Beach Naval Air Station was commissioned on 24 November 1942, trained over 2700 men and 300 WAVES and women Marines, and was placed in caretaker status in June 1946 and deeded back to the city. The MLB timeline for the 1940s says Buzzie Bavasi, sent by the Dodgers by train on November 2, 1947, never went on to the other possible sites in Fort Pierce or Stuart, and that the Dodgers and the City of Vero Beach reached a five-year lease for the former naval air station in 1948, when the minor leaguers trained at Dodgertown while the major league camp was held at Ciudad Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.

The Dodgertown marker adds what the Vero Beach years produced: it was the South's first racially integrated spring training camp, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella were among the first African American players to train there, and 6 World Championship and 14 National League pennant-winning teams played at Dodgertown.

The O'Malley family history records that the Dodgers signed a 21-year lease with the City of Vero Beach, whose officials voted unanimously, during the week of January 31, 1952, with the right to renew for an additional 21 years. The terms were $1 a year for 21 years, which Walter O'Malley paid upfront in cash, and the history says no other major league club had a longer running spring contract. The history calls that lease the first major statement by the Dodgers that they were planning to stay in Vero Beach, and its terms required the team to be in Vero Beach at least 15 days each spring.

The same history notes that, unless acquired during the season, every Dodger player, major and minor leaguer, from 1948 to 2008 trained at Dodgertown. Once Indian River County owned the land and buildings, the team was a tenant whose lease ran out in 2008, and the decision to stay or go rested with owners based far from Vero Beach.

Last verified: October 15, 2026, by re-reading the MLB complex and Dodgers franchise timelines, the Camelback Ranch page, the O'Malley family history and the two Florida Department of State markers for Dodgertown and the naval air station.