WILL IT BECOME A GHOST TOWN

Wherever Danny Ozark goes around Vero Beach, Fla., people ask him the same question.

They figure Ozark knows something because he spent so many years with the Dodgers. His decades with the team, as a minor league player and coach, date back to 1948, when the Brooklyn Dodgers established a spring training camp in this seaside town.

“People come up and ask if the Dodgers are going to move,” said Ozark, who retired in Vero Beach. “This is the question all around. Everybody’s waiting for the storm.”

Clouds have gathered in the form of a bidding war that could spell the end of Dodgertown, an aging complex of ball fields and citrus groves that ranks as the most storied spring camp in baseball.

At least two Arizona cities are trying to lure the Dodgers west to the Cactus League, where millions of taxpayer dollars have been poured into new practice fields and ballparks. One proposal would have the team train at a custom-built camp and share an existing stadium with the San Francisco Giants.

“Forget about treason,” an Arizona official said. “Financially, you have to look at the big picture.”

That picture also includes Las Vegas as a potential site for spring training and the Dodgers’ Class-A team that currently plays in the Florida State League.

But Vero Beach is fighting back. Local officials, faced with losing the Dodgers after next spring, will meet next week to decide if they can offer a sweeter deal.

“Fifty years is no drop in the bucket,” said Jim Chandler, a county administrator. “You hear the buzz around town. This is important to the people.”

The rumblings began last March when the Fox Group purchased the Dodgers from the O’Malley family. Peter Chernin, co-chief operating officer of Fox Group’s parent company, News Corp., said, “We have no interest in running the team as a loss leader or a charity.”

At first, the new owners denied plans to change spring training sites. But as they began wholesale changes on the field and in the front office, as they discussed razing Dodger Stadium, they also contacted officials in Florida, Arizona and Nevada.

“They said they were exploring all options,” said Milt Thomas, economic development director for the Vero Beach Chamber of Commerce. “That was the term they used.”

Bottom-line economics were the issue. No other major league team owns its spring camp, paying all maintenance costs and property taxes. No other West Coast club trains in Florida.

“It didn’t really come as a shock to hear from them,” said Chris Baier, an Arizona Department of Commerce official. “We’ve thought for years that they belonged in Arizona.”

Baseball camps dot the outskirts of metropolitan Phoenix. The Cactus League’s 10 teams play in small, neatly designed stadiums and practice on clusters of fields that shine green against the brown desert.

Representatives of several Arizona cities have met with Fox and are drafting proposals that could be ready, in rough form, by year’s end. Scottsdale and Phoenix appear to be leading candidates. Mesa went as far as asking the Chicago Cubs if they would share their stadium until a long-term solution is found.

The problem is money. The Cactus League, which nearly folded when the Cleveland Indians defected to Florida six years ago, resurrected itself with $71.5 million in county funds from a surcharge on rental cars. The money was used for new training facilities and refurbished stadiums that drew more teams west.

But the league has spent all the tax dollars it expects to receive through 2005, Baier said. Residents were recently assessed $238 million more to build a stadium for the Arizona Diamondbacks and aren’t likely to approve another penny.

“It’s not a real popular topic around here,” Cactus League President Jerry Geiger said. Accommodating the Dodgers, he said, “is going to take some creativity.”

Scottsdale has suggested a joint effort. The Dodgers could share its stadium with the Giants--several Cactus League teams share ballparks--and train in a camp built by a neighboring city. Eliminating the need for a stadium could lower the total cost from an estimated $35 million to about $12 million.

“As strange as it may sound, we will entertain that option,” Derrick Hall, a Dodger spokesman, said.

Interested cities may also consider investing up front and trying to recoup their money through public funding once the political climate improves, Baier said.

Either way, the Cactus League is eager for the Dodgers, a favorite in Phoenix before the Diamondbacks arrived. With Los Angeles only an hour’s flight away, Arizona officials envision planeloads of fans coming to exhibition games that already attract about $105 million in tourist dollars each year.

“The Dodgers are attractive . . . , there are no ifs, ands or buts about that,” said Robert Brinton, executive director of the Mesa Convention and Visitors Bureau, who helped bring other teams to the league.

“Gut-level tells me this will work out,” Brinton said. “From all angles, it makes so much sense.”

Vero Beach doesn’t think so. Change does not sit well in this town of 17,000, a place where oak trees canopy the streets and people guard their distance from Miami 135 miles south.

The Vero Beach City Council and Indian River County Board of Commissioners will meet Nov. 6 to discuss keeping the Dodgers. City Manager Rex Taylor said a likely scenario would have local government offering to buy Dodgertown, then leasing it back to the team.

The county would forfeit $350,000 in property taxes but would preserve its biggest attraction, a 450-acre complex that includes a 6,500-seat stadium, a conference center and two golf courses.

Dodgertown is the county’s fifth-largest employer with 250 workers, as many as 450 in February and March. It draws tourists and pumps an estimated $20 million into the economy.

“In a small community, that’s a sizable sum,” Thomas said. “As far as I’m concerned, as a taxpayer of Indian River County, any options that keep the team here, within reason, are fine by me.”

If spring training goes, Vero Beach could also lose the Class-A team that plays at Dodgertown all summer. Fox has talked to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority about signing a deal with the Stars, a Pacific Coast League team whose contract with the San Diego Padres expires after next season.

The loss to Vero Beach could not be measured in only dollars and cents. The Dodgers have been a way of life since Branch Rickey first brought them at the behest of a local businessman. They converted a World War II naval air station into fields and players slept in barracks.

Over the years, Dodgertown grew to include team offices, tennis courts and a movie theater. But the place kept its sense of heritage, the streets named after former stars.

In town, there was a bar called Ebbets Field and children attended Dodgertown Elementary School.

“When you think about it, the Dodgers had this thing here,” Ozark said. “It was family. It used to be in all of baseball, as far as tradition and players who played for the same team for 15 years.”

Perhaps Los Angeles fans would trade that distant tradition for a little proximity.

“For someone to go to Vero Beach, they’ve got to plan a vacation around it,” Hall said. “With Arizona or Vegas, you’ve got to think that would be easier.”

But the Dodgers and Fox are flirting with fan backlash, a growing resentment over all the changes befalling one of baseball’s most stable teams.

“How does good will translate into dollars and cents?” asked Neil Sullivan, a professor at Baruch College in New York City who studies the business of baseball. “It’s a hard path to chart, but I don’t have any doubt the connection is there.”

Sullivan, whose books include “The Dodgers Move West,” points to the growing popularity of New York Yankee pinstripes and the classic design of Camden Yards in Baltimore.

“The smart way to run baseball is to realize it has a heritage unlike any other sport and that heritage can pay off with the fans,” he said. “That’s why I think it would be an unwise move to leave Vero Beach.”

Not that any deals are signed. Arizona officials call negotiations “very preliminary” and know the Dodgers might be using them as a bargaining chip.

“Happens all the time,” Brinton said. “There is no doubt that if they want to send a real message to Vero Beach, they have to be out here meeting with us.”

The team denies trying to up the stakes, but Fox has not shied from publicizing its interest in all offers.

Said Brinton, “They flat-out told us the first day we met with them, ‘It’s all right if you talk to the press.’ ”

That is why people are so concerned in Vero Beach. The mayor has said it would be a “mortal sin” for the Dodgers to leave. The local newspaper wrote: “Much of what Vero Beach has become over the past 50 years can be traced to the Dodgers.”

Many of the residents grew up with the team. Thomas remembers calling home once and the phone being answered by Wally Moon, who played bridge with Thomas’ parents. His sister dated Wes Parker.

At the Long Branch Saloon, not far from Dodgertown, Orval Shelton, a 72-year-old general contractor, reminisces about the parties Walter O’Malley used to throw for local businessmen.

Bernie Sapp tells stories from his childhood in the 1950s.

“They used to feel sorry for me and let me into games for free,” Sapp said. “I used to holler for Duke Snider.”

And people continually stop Ozark on the street and in the market. They ask him the same question over and over: Are the Dodgers coming back?

“I can’t answer that,” he said. “But it seems like baseball is breaking away from the old traditions.”