Here are the Dodgers Spring Training highlights you've been waiting for ... from 69 years ago
Spring Training in 2014 is a highly structured affair, with all 30 MLB teams neatly divided between Arizona and Florida. But that wasn't always the case. In the early 20th century, various clubs also sometimes prepared for the season in California, Hawaii and even Cuba.
Travel restrictions associated with World War II threw things into even more disarray. The conflict caused the Brooklyn Dodgers to hold their 1945 Spring Training at Bear Mountain Inn in Rockland County, N.Y instead of a warm-weather locale. You can see some newsreel footage of that camp -- including player-manager Leo Durocher berating a third baseman to "get that paintbrush out of your hand" and declaring that he'll "break you in right."
Oh, and as for his prediction that the Brooklyn club would be "quite an improvement" over the 1944 edition? He was right -- the 1945 Dodgers finished 87-67, winning 24 more games than the previous year.