Vero Beach Hopes Its Dodger ‘Family’ Will Hurry Home : Spring training: Merchants in town view baseball’s training camp labor action as somebody stealing Christmas.

The priest looked out over the congregation at St. Helen’s church, spreading his arms and smiling.

“My friends, there is more to life than spring training,” Monsignor Irvine Nugent declared.

He was answered by one nervous chuckle. Then another. Then silence.

A major league baseball team isn’t the only thing absent from Vero Beach these days. Life is slower, quieter and seems to have misplaced its sense of humor.

Two weeks ago, the big league Dodgers canceled their charter flight into the tiny airport here. Two weeks ago, lines at restaurants dwindled, hotels began receiving cancellations and guys behind the bar began carrying their tips home in paper cups.

As the merchants in this town of 18,000 say, it has been two weeks since somebody stole Christmas.

“That’s what having the Dodgers has been like for us, Christmas in the spring,” said Roger Neach, owner of Dobber’s men’s shop on the trendy strip that borders the Atlantic Ocean. “Now, we don’t know what is happening.”

Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax used to come into his store to browse. Fans with credit cards followed them.

But since the baseball owners locked the players out of camp, Neach has seen mostly disappointed faces. He tries to cheer the tourists, then turns his back and worries about reducing his inventory and cutting back hours usually given to extra spring employees.

“All anybody wants to know now is when the lockout is going to end,” Neach said. “I spend a lot of time telling them I don’t know any more than anybody else. All any of us can do is hope.”

Vero Beach embraced the Dodgers when they moved their spring headquarters here in 1948 and has never quite released them.

The wooden street signs proclaiming this as spring home of the Dodgers are never moved. The Dodger photos and memorabilia that line the walls of many businesses never come down.

“It’s like we have always been led to believe that they are our Dodgers, too,” said Dennis Widenhofer, assistant store manager of a tire franchise. “It’s always been like, they don’t just belong to Los Angeles.”

Every spring, this trust has been rewarded with the appearance of that chartered jet and with six weeks of spring training baseball that made the town bulge with fresh money and excitement.

Until now.

“It’s like when you’re waiting for your family to come over to your house for dinner and they don’t show up,” said J. B. Norton Jr., the executive vice president of the Vero Beach-Indian River County Chamber of Commerce. “At first, you are irritated. And then you are worried.

“That’s what we are doing now, sitting around, waiting and worrying about when our family is coming home.”

More than just their hearts are breaking. Norton says a study has shown that the Dodgers pump $4.5 million into the local economy. In total tourist income, the city figures the Dodgers are worth $20 million.

“Not that we are losing all that,” said Norton, who has a Dodger bat leaning against a corner of his office. “People come for other things, and a lot of people have to come no matter what happens because their (rooms) have already been paid for. But there will still be a significant impact.”

One businessman offered a different interpretation of the situation.

“You say the players are being locked out? It’s Vero Beach that’s being locked out,” said Joe Brennan, local manager of a rental car agency. “This town is the one that’s not getting paid this spring.”

Brennan normally does as much as $40,000 worth of business through the Dodgers, who rent 90% of their cars through him. Although he says it’s not “life or death money,” it is money directly tied to his standard of living.

“A lot of us do good business down here during the winter season, regardless,” Brennan said. “But at least for me, what the Dodgers bring is gravy money. This is money that goes right to my pocket, the only time of the year that ever happens. It is something you try not to count on, but . . . “

Sitting in his tiny office adjoining a gas station, with a weathered wall air conditioner running even though the door was open, Brennan put down his cigarette and sighed.

“Already, you can take the goals I set for myself this year and crumple them up and throw them away,” he said.

Widenhofer, sitting in Brennan’s office exchanging laments, put the losses in even more personal terms.

“The biggest thing this town is missing is the 80-year-old guy driving down from New York (who has) been following the Dodgers since they were in Brooklyn,” he said. “That guy ain’t coming this year. And so I can’t fix his tires or change his oil--and I know I’d be changing his oil once. And so I lose.”

Some of those tourists are still coming. They can be found every day at Dodgertown’s Holman Stadium. They pull up in their dusty cars with out-of-state license plates, walk through the one open gate and climb to the top of the stands.

And there they sit. Even if the field is empty, they sit, as if any minute now Kirk Gibson will run across that dark green diamond.

Finally, Dodger minor leaguers show up, wearing funny blue jerseys with no names on the back. The tourists pull out their cameras, snap a few pictures of people whose names they may never know and wander back to their cars.

Before leaving, they might stop and see Giggs Groul. Offering a big smile and no waiting, Groul has been running a full concession stand at Holman Stadium despite the lockout.

She sells soft drinks, candy, the works. Want a nice cup of hot chocolate on an 80-degree day? She’ll pour it for you. The nacho and popcorn machines have been turned off, but she can still make both items in the microwave.

And for what? After four hours one day, she had sold 15 hot dogs. The next day, she stood in front of the electric fan and yawned.

“I feel like the Maytag man--nobody needs me,” she said. “During the regular spring, we will have eight people working this stand, and folks will be lined up deep, deep, for the whole afternoon.

“Now? Nothing. And the people who do come here are so disappointed.”

Sean Cusson, 5, accompanied his father, Joe, and brother, Ned, from Boston on a spring trip that was supposed to include live baseball players. Cusson even bought some baseball cards for the trip, new and sturdy and perfect for autographing.

“I’m looking for Orel Hershiser,” a sunburned Sean Cusson said while sitting with his dad along with a dozen other fans in the bleachers.

His father looked down at the minor leaguers and shook his head.

“Who are those guys?” he asked.

Then Joe looked around for Ned, 16. The boy had hoped to pick up a few tips from major leaguers but had grown bored and walked off.

Several miles away, in a bar-restaurant on the beach, another more expensive sort of boredom was taking place.

“Spring training is all a matter of stools,” said Paul Millen, part-time bartender at the popular Bobby’s. “You got four stools with coaches on them, four stools with writers on them, Maybe a couple of stools with players. And then all kinds of women and other people who want to be around those stools.”

And with no spring training, said Millen, you can go broke. During the rest of the year, he works three hours a night. While the Dodgers are here, he works six hours a night. Guess how much he is working these days?

“Just don’t try to even guess how much money I’m losing,” said Millen, 40, who is also a part-time flight instructor. “Just say my income has been cut in half. All of a sudden, during what is supposed to be my best time of the year, I’m barely getting by. Spring training is like what I live on.”

On the walls of his bar hang photos of mugging, smiling, posing Dodgers. Of Dodgers in the World Series. Of Dodgers in happier times.

Millen excused himself, walked past the dozen people who quietly gathered around the bar and switched the channel on one of the wall television sets to a Laker game.