The Details are in the Devil Rays
Vero Beach Will Host the Return of the Devil Rays to the Florida State League, but will they be the Port Charlotte D-Rays in 2009?

Brian ROSS
MLNSportsZone.com

Lake Buena Vista, Florida - The Details are in the Devil Rays for Vero Beach fans. Apparently the Dodgers may not be taking the field at Dodgertown in 2009 (See "Grapefruit Sours", Raw Feed, 11.16.06), but they're still in charge of the front office during the Florida State League (FSL) season.

The Dodgers will run the FSL club's front office operations for the D-Rays. Katie Siegfried and Shawn Marette are co-GMs of the new Vero Beach Devil Rays in the Class-A Florida State League, but they're employees of the Los Angeles Dodgers organization which has operated Holman Stadium and the Spring Training complex for the last 58 years. Most of the past Vero Beach staff has been retained, according to Siegfried.

The Devil Rays are in Vero Beach for the 2007 and 2008, but word is that the Port Charlotte, Florida remodel of their facility into a Spring Training home for the Devil Rays will roll out on time, and the VB-D-Rays will most likely become the Port Charlotte D-Rays in 2009, when the Dodgers depart Dodgertown for the Cactus League.

"We're here for the next two years," said Siegfried of the FSL club. "We'll have to see what happens after that."

The Dodgers will sell much of the physical plant of Dodgertown to the City of Vero Beach, which will be remodeled and redeveloped with shopping and possibly residential developments added to the property. The old nine-hole golf course, which had been used originally by African American players who were excluded from nearby facilities that catered to whites only in the 1950s, will be redeveloped. Holman and the other facilities are also expected to get a major face-lift as Vero Beach tries to attract another major league club to the community. The Dodgers brought an estimated $30 million into the economy of Vero each season.

One sidebar of these Winter Meetings may be with clubs that could take over Dodgertown.

A hot candidate is rumored to be the Boston Red Sox. Red Sox Owner John Henry is a Boca Raton, Florida resident, on the East coast of the state, but his Spring club is out in the aging complex at Fort Myers, on the West Coast of Florida. Their minor league camp is in another facility down the street. The primo practice fields of Dodgertown offer unified operations on one campus, and the jet would hardly have to get airborne to make the short twenty minute flight from Boca to Vero.

The Dodgers are working with Vero to put [Your Club Name Here] into the "town" that once was Dodgertown.

See also: "A Tale of Two Hotels at the Major League Baseball (MLB) Winter Meetings," MAJOR BLOGS, 12.04.06
"Fishwrap Psychoses: The Season is Lost If The Big Dollar Players Don't Get Signed," MAJOR BLOGS, 12.06.06