When Dodgertown opened in 1948, one year after Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier, the players shared living quarters and other facilities, no matter what their race. The golf course there opened in 1954, even as public golf courses outside the Dodgertown gates were segregated.
The Dodgers abandoned their historic Florida spring home in 2008, but the facility was revitalized Tuesday with a new name: the Jackie Robinson Training Complex.
The city of Vero Beach never did secure a team to replace the Dodgers as a spring training tenant. Now, after former Dodgers president Peter O’Malley revived the complex under the “Historic Dodgertown” name, Major League Baseball has agreed to operate the facility for at least a decade and use it as a home for several of its diversity programs.
“It is a symbol of our commitment to make baseball look like America,” commissioner Rob Manfred said at a news conference in Vero Beach.
“It’s been in Ohio as early as the mid-1850s at least, brought in as an ornamental plant because of its unique foliage and white flowers,” Gardner said. “It was actually planted in people’s landscaping, and it has been spreading.”
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