VERO BEACH, Fla. -- The memories came pouring out of Dusty Baker, as clear as they were when he lived them in vivid Dodger Blue decades earlier.
After all, he spent some of the best years of his life right here -- under the sun and surrounded by stars. It’s where he first learned what it meant to play for the Dodgers, where he made lifelong friends, shared way too many laughs and even learned some lessons that he still carries to this day.
A return to Dodgertown -- the historic Spring Training home of the Dodgers for 60 years -- had Baker recalling stories of Sandy Koufax, Tommy Lasorda, Hank Aaron and Jackie Robinson. The Dodgers moved their Spring Training headquarters to Arizona after the 2008 season, but Dodgertown still exists.
And so do the memories.
“The bullpen was over there,” Baker said Monday as he was driven around Holman Stadium in a golf cart. “That’s where I had my first long conversation with Sandy about hitting and pitching. He said hitting and pitching are mirror images of each other. I use that today.”
Now known as the Jackie Robinson Training Complex, the facility this week is playing host to the Nicaraguan team that will compete in the World Baseball Classic. The team is managed by Baker, who hopped on a golf cart and took an hourlong tour through the back fields, facilities and stadium with Del Matthews, the senior vice president of baseball development for MLB. He’s also Baker’s godson.
Wearing a sharp blue and white Nicaraguan uniform that is reminiscent of the Dodgers, and with his trademark toothpick at the side of his mouth, Baker, 76, returned to Dodgertown for the first time in 30 years.
“It’s unbelievable, the improvements,” he said. “From the lunch room, to the stadium, to everything. Seeing the pictures on the wall reminds me what it was like to have [Roy] Campanella in camp and [Carl] Erskine, Tommy Davis … Sandy Koufax. We had some bad dudes instructing us and teaching us how to play.”
In 1948, the year after Robinson broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier, Dodgers co-owner and general manager Branch Rickey founded Dodgertown, a 220-acre development where all players, regardless of race, could play, eat and live together in preparation for the season. Baker, a 19-year Major League veteran who later won more than 2,000 games as a manager, including one World Series title with Houston in 2022, spent eight springs in Dodgertown (1976-83).
MLB took over Dodgertown in 2019, and it was renamed in honor of Robinson’s impact on baseball and civil rights. The entire facility was refurbished and today is a hub for amateur baseball and softball development initiatives, with a focus on diversifying the game and providing opportunities for the underserved, especially African Americans.
Among the MLB events that it hosts are the Hank Aaron Invitational (boys baseball), Breakthrough Series (girls and boys baseball and girls softball), Trailblazer Series (girls baseball), RBI World Series (baseball and softball) and the Andre Dawson Classic (HBCU college baseball).
Memories of the Dodgers still fill the halls and walls, with pictures of Robinson front and center. Baker never met Robinson, but he knows the family well and he was close friends with Aaron, who was mentored by Robinson. Several black and white pictures covered the walls in a conference room.
“I got Jackie all over my wall [at home],” Baker said. “I got that picture of my wall, too. Jackie in Cuba, when he played in Cuba.”
Baker, using his bat, pointed to a picture of Robinson signing autographs in Cuba. There was another picture of Robinson and his wife, Rachel, in Honolulu, Hawaii. And there was a picture of Robinson sitting at his locker the day before he retired. Baker has that one at home in Sacramento.
“This is one of my greatest things at my house,” he said. “It’s in Darren B’s [his son] room. It’s next to the photo of my last day with the Dodgers.”
The tour took Baker through the refurbished locker room and bathrooms. He quickly remembered being told to run -- not walk -- across the field while leaving the clubhouse. It was the Dodger way. Baker requested to see the swimming pool, where he sat under the stars one night with Japanese slugger Sadaharu Oh and talked hitting.
“The moon was flickering in the pool water and the wind was blowing,” Baker said. “As soon as the wind stopped, [the moon’s reflection] looked like what the ball looks like, he says, when your mind is clear.”
Baker, standing on a balcony and pointing to the villa below, recalled howling in laughter when teammates Jay Johnstone and Jerry Reuss tied a rope to Lasorda’s door so he couldn’t get out of his room. Back then, the players and staff stayed on site.
“He was cussing … and they were dying laughing,” Baker chuckled.
The Dodgers have been gone from Vero Beach for two decades, but it will always be Dodgertown to those who played there.
“I kind of lived my life through this,” Baker said. “This was some of the best days of my career, some of the best days of my life. Growing up a Dodger fan, I dreamed of being a Dodger. … You have to seize every day because this is evidence how fast things can go by.”