If you think traffic is bad near Vero Beach airport now, just imagine if thousands of condominiums had been built there after the Los Angeles Dodgers played their final spring training game at Dodgertown in 2008.
The past 18 years in that part of the former Naval Air Station south of the airport has been full of twists and turns. At times, there was little hope the historic baseball complex would end up in good hands.
Many local people have been part of its transformation into the Jackie Robinson Training Complex, an MLB-run facility leased from Indian River County, which helps to make improvements.
Bruce Froemming, a former MLB umpire and longtime Vero Beach area resident who died the other day at 86 after falling in his Wisconsin home, played a role.
“No matter what the circumstance, he had an impact,” Peter O’Malley, who sold the Dodgers several years before they pulled out of Vero Beach, said of Froemming Feb. 27.
O’Malley played the key role in keeping baseball in Vero Beach, eventually building what was known as Historic Dodgertown into a tournament complex and training center for youth, high school, college, adult and MLB-related baseball programs and multiple other sports.
Froemming, who first came to town in the early 1960s as a minor league umpire working spring training games, made his stance clear at a 2011 meeting, urging county commissioners and Vero Beach council members to swap land at the property so Minor League Baseball could build four youth baseball and fastpitch softball fields south of Holman Stadium.
“If you put the Sports Village in your head … you will all leave here as one team,” Froemming told commissioners and council members debating the swaps, according to Press Journal archives.
Two years later, he got upset reading Press Journal coverage of a meeting in which county commissioners didn’t trust O’Malley in his effort to take over the complex from Minor League Baseball.
So Froemming called the newspaper’s sports columnist, Ray McNulty, who reported on the then-retired umpire’s take.
“I’m calling because I’d hate to see this county make a bad decision,” Froemming told the columnist. “It would be a huge mistake to lose someone like Peter O’Malley, someone who cares so much about this town and that piece of property that he wanted to come back here to make sure people remember how special it was. Why would you even risk giving him a reason to walk away?”
At the time, O’Malley sought a partnership with the county, but the county was playing hardball.
“Peter O’Malley is doing us a favor,” Froemming said. “He’s here because he has had a lifelong love affair with Vero Beach, because Dodgertown has always meant something to him and his family.
“Vero Beach and Dodgertown have always been synonymous … (O’Malley) wants to make sure people never forget that they were here. He wants to make sure Dodgertown remains a landmark.”
The good news was, perhaps in part because of Froemming’s efforts, O’Malley reached a deal with the county. Then, when he and his partners (O’Malley’s sister, Terry Seidler, and former Dodgers pitchers Hideo Nomo and Chan Ho Park) had finally made a profit and were ready to retire, he persuaded MLB to take over and build it up.
MLB continues what O’Malley built, but has brought international attention to the area, hosting major youth development programs at the complex.
It hosts a well-attended Jackie Robinson Day game to benefit United Way of Indian River County each April 15 and the Andre Dawson Classic, bringing in college teams each February. Some of these events air on the MLB Network.
And the upgraded facility may be in the best shape it ever has been in.
It’s scary to think what might have come of that property had O’Malley not taken over ― with the support of folks like Froemming, who he met while running Dodgertown in the early 1960s.
Froemming and Dutch Rennert, who also became an MLB umpire and lived in Vero Beach, stayed at Dodgertown in those years and fell in love with the city, O’Malley said.
“He truly loved Vero Beach,” O’Malley said of Froemming, who moved to Wisconsin to be closer to family in 2016. “And he wanted (Dodgertown) to continue.”
O’Malley told me he thinks Froemming should be in the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York. O’Malley and Craig Callan, a former Dodgertown director, thought enough of Froemming they named the Vero Beach complex’s umpire room after him in 2016.
Froemming spent lots of time at Dodgertown over the years — often with a smile, joking with baseball personnel, until it was time to get down to business. O’Malley touted Froemming’s on-field communication skills with defusing heated situations over his 37 years on MLB diamonds.
Thankfully, those communications skills helped keep a beloved baseball complex from becoming something potentially much worse.
This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.
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This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: MLB umpire Froemming helped keep baseball in Florida city | Opinion
Reporting by Laurence Reisman, Treasure Coast Newspapers / Treasure Coast Newspapers
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