The Vero Beach Dodgers Minor League Team — Vero Beach, Florida

The Vero Beach Dodgers were a Class A farm team of the Los Angeles Dodgers that played in the Florida State League for 27 seasons, from 1980 through 2006. Their home was Holman Stadium in Dodgertown, the ballpark the big league club used each spring, so Vero Beach had professional baseball from April into September as well as in March. According to the MLB history of the Jackie Robinson Training Complex, in 1980 the Dodgers move their Single-A team to Vero Beach to play in the Florida State League.

The franchise outlived its Dodger affiliation by two years. In 2007 and 2008 it played at Holman Stadium as the Vero Beach Devil Rays, a Tampa Bay Devil Rays affiliate, and after the 2008 season it moved to Port Charlotte and became the Charlotte Stone Crabs. That move ended 29 straight summers of Florida State League play in Vero Beach.

The first Vero Beach manager was Stan Wasiak, a Dodger organization veteran known as the King of the Minors. The MLB timeline credits him with a managerial career that spanned 37 seasons (1950 to 1986), seven of them in Vero Beach, and 2,530 wins, the most in minor league baseball. The BR Bullpen biography adds that he set the all-time minor league wins record in 1985 while managing the Vero Beach club and retired after 1986.

Vero Beach won quickly. The 1980 team went 82-59 and lost in the league finals, according to the year-by-year table kept by BR Bullpen, and it reached the playoffs that first season. In 1981 Steve Sax became the first Vero Beach Dodger player to make the Los Angeles Dodgers roster, one season after the Class A club arrived at Holman Stadium.

Holman Stadium grew with the team. In 1984 it was expanded with 6,474 chair-back seats, and the same year it hosted the Florida State League All-Star Game. The game returned to Vero Beach in 1991. In 1985 the City of Vero Beach annexed 170 acres of Dodgertown, bringing the ballpark inside the city limits.

The Vero Beach Dodgers won two league championships. The first came in 1983, when Wasiak's team, only sixth in the regular season at 69-65, defeated the Daytona Astros three games to two in a best-of-five final, according to the MLB timeline. The second came in 1990 under manager Joe Alvarez, after a 79-56 season, and is recorded in the 1990s timeline.

Other Vero Beach teams came close. BR Bullpen lists league finals losses in 1980 and 1997 and first round exits in 1982, 1988, 1991, 1996, 2001, 2004 and 2005. The 1991 club went 79-52, the best winning percentage in franchise history, and the 2004 team under Scott Little finished first in the standings at 77-57 before losing in the first round. The low point was 1999, a 48-85 season under Alvaro Espinoza.

Dodgertown's international programs reached the Class A roster. In 1989 Chunichi Dragons pitchers Yashiro Kawabata and Masaaki Kamanaka played for Vero Beach, and in 1993 Samsung Lions coach Taw Soo Jang stayed in Vero Beach to coach the Class A Dodgers, the MLB timeline records.

The Vero Beach dugout served as a Dodger proving ground for managers as well as players. After Wasiak, the BR Bullpen table shows Terry Collins running the 1982 club for all but one game of a 79-53 season, John Shoemaker managing in 1987 and 1988 and again in 1997, 1998 and 2000, Joe Alvarez in 1989 and 1990, Jerry Royster in 1991, Glenn Hoffman in 1992 and Joe Vavra in 1993.

Continuity on the Vero Beach staff came from the coaches. Dennis Lewallyn was the pitching coach in every season but one from 1983 through 1994, and Shoemaker also served as hitting coach for six straight seasons from 1981 to 1986 before taking over as manager. Jon Debus managed from 1994 through 1996, Bob Mariano in 2001, Juan Bustabad in 2002 and Scott Little from 2003 through 2005, the last stretch of winning Dodger baseball at Holman Stadium. The early 1990s were the leanest run: three straight 12th place finishes from 1992 through 1994.

Season attendance figures compiled by StatsCrew show a club that drew steadily but modestly at Holman Stadium. The first season brought 80,063 fans in 1980. Crowds peaked with the championship era: 94,832 in 1990 and a franchise high of 95,900 in 1991, an average of 1,464 per home date.

Vero Beach crowds thinned later. Attendance fell to 42,702 in 1995 and averaged 757 per date in 2001, when the season total was 49,177. The final Dodger season, 2006, drew 64,985 for a 51-80 team managed by Luis Salazar. Across 27 seasons the Vero Beach Dodgers never drew 100,000 in a year, while the March spring training games at the same Dodgertown ballpark set a record of 85,332 in 1992 alone.

The Los Angeles Dodgers ended the affiliation after 2006. The MLB 2000s timeline records that the Vero Beach Dodgers played their final season in the Florida State League in 2006, their 27th overall, and that in 2007 the Tampa Bay Devil Rays Class-A team played the first of two seasons at Holman Stadium as the Vero Beach Devil Rays.

The Vero Beach Devil Rays did not contend. The BR Bullpen team page lists a 59-79 record in 2007 under Joe Szekely and a 54-81 record in 2008 under Jim Morrison. In 2007 outfielder Sergio Pedroza hit .286 with 22 home runs and pitcher Jake McGee struck out 145 batters in 21 starts; both were named Florida State League All-Stars from the Vero Beach roster.

The team left when Dodgertown lost its anchor tenant. Indian River County purchased the land and facilities at Dodgertown from the Los Angeles Dodgers on August 29, 2001. After the Dodgers played their last spring game at Holman Stadium in March 2008, county officials decided in December 2008 to shutter the Vero Beach facility, the MLB timeline records.

By then the Class A franchise had a new home. Following the 2008 season the Vero Beach Devil Rays moved to Port Charlotte and became the Charlotte Stone Crabs, playing at Charlotte Sports Park as a Tampa Bay Rays affiliate from 2009 to 2019, according to BR Bullpen. Port Charlotte itself lost the affiliation in the minor league restructuring after the 2020 season. The Vero Beach property reopened after May 2009, when Minor League Baseball agreed to run the old Dodgertown as Vero Beach Sports Village for tournaments and umpire schools rather than a Florida State League team.