Three years later, now in the Tommy era, I had won an essay contest sponsored by the local Vero Beach newspaper, the Press Journal, and was wearing Steve Yeager's old jersey and standing in the Dodgers' dugout as designated Spring Training batboy. For a 12-year old, the dream had come true. I was allowed to leave school early for those games in March 1978 so I could play catch with Steve Garvey, practice pitching to Yeager, and laugh at Dusty Baker's jokes. I also had to work, running out to the plate to retreive Reggie Smith's bat, and wipe off the plate with a rag because Billy Martin had complained to the umpires that the plate was too dirty for his pitchers. I remember that March Yankees game, only five months removed from Reggie's three-HR game that crushed the Dodgers' World Series hopes in 1977, with Martin bitching about the overflow of people sitting on the outfield "wall," which as you know was a hill, replete with royal palm trees (this was before the fence was put into place) and how this would affect ground-rule doubles. I also remember Tommy swearing loudly about Martin's grandstanding. I took seriously my responsibility to bring Davey Lopes bubble gum for each game after he confided to me that his numbers would be much higher if I was his supplier. I was damn sure not going to let his OBP suffer due to my sixth-grade negligence. And I recall signing autographs for younger fans who saw me in a uniform and standing in the dugout and assumed I was someone important. Those were wonderful days when Garvey and Cey and Sutton and Monday stood out in the field surrounded by eager fans, nervous parents who couldn't see their sons through the crowds, and grown men who just wanted an autograph because they loved the game. But the world moved on.

In 1980, I remember the morning my Dad told me that Vero Beach was getting a minor league team. Wow, you mean we can watch professional baseball all summer long? We had season tickets about 15 rows behind the third-base dugout that summer and for a few years after. I didn't see Sid Fernandez's perfect game but saw him pitch often. We all loved Stan Wasiak, King of the Minors! Then I hit high school and my trips to Dodger-town were not as frequent. Sports, academics, girls got in the way. I did wear my Dodgers cap to my prep school the day after the Dodgers won the World Series in 1981 and received the usual ribbing from those cool guys who had no allegiances to anything except cracking jokes in the back row and other people's homework. I even picked up the nickname "Dodge" out of my devotion to the Boys in Blue, a name my high school friends still use 25 years later.

As I traveled to Pittsburgh for four wonderful years of college, I always referred to my hometown, which people had never heard of, as the Spring Training home of the Dodgers. That put Vero Beach on their mental map and gave me instant credibility with any baseball fan. When I was home from college in the summer of 1986, I learned to play golf on the idiosyncratic nine-hole course that wrapped around the back end of Holman Stadium, a course built by Walter O'Malley for Jackie Robinson so he could play golf while in Florida, the town's other courses being closed to him in the early '50s.

When college ended and I found myself back in Vero Beach working as a writer for a marketing firm, the hand of fate led me back to Dodgertown. Two weeks after Peter O'Malley returned with his grateful employees from Italy, where they celebrated the 1988 World Championship, I landed one of the coveted Dodgers Spring Training internships offered each year, usually through Ohio University. I was the first non-OU student hired, but, of course, I had all the right bona fides. I mean, how could they not hire me, I had the nickname!

For 2 1/2 years, I worked in the publicity office during spring training and then followed that as a business manager with stints in Kissimmee during the summers and one stint in Mesa at the Instructional League. What a trip it was. I still tell my son about the day the men from Costacos Brothers came in to shoot their Big Game Hunter poster of Gibby and needed a couple of extras to stand in a cage that read "Don't Feed the Pitch-ers." There I was standing in a hot cage as the sun went down in the Florida scrub behind a man who had just won the MVP and who the following two years would never consent to signing a poster for me. That's OK; my college buddies could buy the poster in New York and Chicago. There was the day I gave Willie Randolph a ride out to the stadium before a game and he mentioned how the pregame music was always so lame, so I raced off to my VW and grabbed my Atlantic Rhythm and Blues tape, which I played over the PA system and got Willie and others to dance in the infield. I'll never forget the affable L.A. sportswriters like Terry and Gordy calling in their stories over in the clubhouse after the games, giving us interns lurid nicknames, and telling stories of the previous night at Bobby's on the Beach, which usually involved someone misplacing their car. Mostly I recall the warm sunsets sitting with my boss Tom and co-workers and perhaps PR guy Jay Lucas having a few "Orange Whips" in the press box after the game was long over, watching the orange glow descend over that famous hill in centerfield.

During that first summer, I befriended a young, hotshot catcher who once quit the Vero Beach team to clear his mind, and we later often drank pitchers at the Pine in Tempe, talking music, women, sports, whatever. I also recall a young skinny player from the Dominican with a good sense of humor and who was always very polite to me but could throw the ball as fast as anyone in the organization. Both players are now on their way to Cooperstown. It was a great ride and I still laugh when I tell the story how in the Gulf Coast League cham-pionship game in August 1989, my pitching coach, who also happened to be the MVP for the 1955 World Series, told me to get the champagne ready — and then we blew the lead and the game, and I slipped in the mud carry-ing the stupid cooler back to the bus. He teased me about that for over a year until that night in Phoenix the folwoing year, when I drove him to the airport so he could fly to the city of Brotherly Love to meet with the Phillies about their pitching-coach vacancy. What a wonderful, funny man Pods was! He even taught me how to bet at the track like they did on off days when he was still pitching. Finally, there was that lunch with him and Koufax in Kissimmee shooting the breeze like it was 1962 - my own private Field of Dreams, hearing sto-ries about the glory days.

But those days are gone now. I'm no longer in baseball. And the Dodgers are no longer to be in Vero Beach. I really can't blame the Dodgers for leaving. The California fans have never had this opportunity that I grew up with, and the Brooklyn fan base in Florida is dying off now, although you can still get the best Italian sub south of NYC at Giordano's off U.S. 1 in Vero. It's ironic that when VB was small, the Dodgers thrived. But in the last 10 years, as VB has mushroomed into a must-live locale for the nouveau riche, the importance of Spring Training has waned. VB is now too full of Miami ex-pats more concerned with their McMansions and their weekend Harleys than with a game that they did not and their kids no longer play.

I wish the Dodgers well, and I will always be a fan. It's been hard-wired into me. Yes, the blood is blue. And my 10-year old, who's never seen a spring training game and only a few VB Dodgers games, is becoming a fan. So, the legacy continues. And Steve Yeager's jersey still hangs in my closet.