As we all know, spring training numbers mean nothing. But here are some interesting ones — just ’cause.

26: Number of times Brewers RF Corey Hart struck out in 67 spring training at-bats.

5: Number of hits Cubs reliever Mike Wuertz gave up this spring — all singles. He didn’t allow a run, walked none and struck out 13 in nine innings.

$6,500,000: How much the Astros will pay SP Woody Williams not to pitch this year. The Astros cut Williams after he posted a 11.32 ERA this spring.

15: Number of walks given up by Tigers lefthander Dontrelle Willis in 16 2/3 innings this spring. He has a 8.64 earned run average.

9: Number of home runs given up by Mariners SP Erik Bedard in 24 innings. He’s posted an 8.63 ERA in six starts, allowing 35 hits.

.431: Melvin Mora’s batting average this spring. He’s led Orioles regulars in batting average, homers (two), RBIs (13) and walks (nine).

1.572: Rangers CF Josh Hamilton’s OPS this spring. He entered the weekend hitting .556 and reached base in 13 consecutive plate appearances (10 hits, three walks) at one point.

0: Number of home runs reigning NL MVP Jimmy Rollins hit this spring. He batted .188.

5,404: Average number of fans who attended Pittsburgh Pirates home spring training games this year — a new record. Those people are loyal.

It happens every spring. A scrappy young player walks into big league camp as a relative unknown to the general masses. While the veterans greet each other with big smiles, the newcomer has to introduce himself to pretty much everyone. Initially, the sportswriters ignore him and concentrate on the more established players made available by the team’s PR department. But when the preseason games begin, and when the new kid steps into the batter’s box, the attention is his. And he capitalizes.

The next day, he finds his name in the sports sections of numerous newspapers. Do this a few more times and the fan base begins to get excited. He continues to succeed throughout the month of March to the point where he improbably cracks the big league roster. By now, the fans know who he is. He’s the new guy who batted over .400 or had an ERA below 2 throughout the exhibition games. And the first time he comes out of that home dugout for his first appearance of the regular season, he gets an ovation from the crowd that’s usually reserved for the star players.

For the 2008 New York Mets, that guy is Angel Pagan, the 26-year old outfielder who the Mets drafted back in 1999 but had to reacquire in a trade with the Chicago Cubs during the offseason. While not completely anonymous on the big stage thanks to the 318 ABs he’s had as a Cub in ‘06 and ‘07, the average fan probably knew very little about him except that he has perhaps the most oxymoronic name in Major League history.

But in the last three weeks, Pagan has accumulated 45 ABs during which he’s gotten on-base at a .426 clip and slugged .578 with a .400 batting average and a couple stolen bags to boot. This has prompted the beat writers to collectively call for his inclusion on the big league roster. His stock became so high that some people actually bought the fake rumor that the Red Sox were going to trade Coco Crisp to the Mets in exchange for Pagan. Really? Isn’t that taking things a bit too far?

Due to the not-so-shocking injury to Moises Alou, the starting left-field spot on Opening Day is yet to be determined. Just two or three weeks ago it would have been considered foolish to even suggest that Pagan deserved the gig. And I don’t completely understand why we should be thinking any differently now.

It appears on the surface that most people get it. It’s spring training. Hitters are facing AA pitchers and vice versa. Established pitchers are trying out that new cut fastball that they can’t quite command just yet and the veteran hitters are trying to get their timing back. There’s no evidence that spring training success bodes well for the regular season. None. Zilch. Nada. I think the majority of the baseball world is in agreement on this one.

Then why doesn’t this logic hold true for Pagan? Why should we be impressed by a .426 OBP and a .578 SLG when it’s blatantly obvious that both stats are being held up by an impossibly high .400 AVG? Why should we ignore the fact that so far in his career the man’s line is an unimpressive .255/.306/.415? Because he’s young and has room to grow? Because he wasn’t wearing a NY Mets uniform prior to this year? Not buying it.

Far more indicative of his skill set than the 45 ABs he’s gotten this spring is the 2483 ABs he’s accumulated in the minor leagues. Pagan didn’t fare amazingly well during this time either, going .280/.338./.373 - numbers that would be fine… if he was a speedy shortstop who excelled defensively. Pagan does run well, but he appears to be cut from the same cloth as Endy Chavez, another backup outfielder for the Mets. They are useful as fifth outfielders who can be called upon as a defensive replacement or pinch runner, but why would you want two of them on your team?

Regardless of what I think, it appears that Pagan will be heading north with the team in a couple of weeks. But unless the Mets continue to be decimated by injuries, I just don’t see how they could justify keeping Pagan in the bigs for much longer. I hope I’m wrong on this one as I’d like nothing more than to see him succeed far beyond what I perceived were his capabilities as long as he does it in a Mets uniform. But history tells me that’s just a pipe dream.

Yesterday afternoon my girlfriend Suz and I went to watch the Mexican National Team play the Colorado Rockies at Hi Corbett Field in Tucson.

Mexico won 2-1. It was the second time in three days that the Rockies squared off against Mexico. Two days earlier the Rockies won 15-2. Fortunately for Mexico, today’s game was a split squad game for Colorado, so the Rox were without loyal Umpbump reader Troy Tulowitzki and a few other key regulars.

Rockies players who did play today included Matt Holliday, Willy Taveras, Brad Hawpe and Todd Helton. Jeff Francis started the game for the Rox. I didn’t recognize any of the Mexican players.

We sat right in the middle of the Mexican fans, behind Mexico’s dugout. I don’t speak Spanish so I missed the meaning behind a ton of heckling. The guys sitting right behind us were drinking Coors Lights and having a blast. Every minute or so a guy in sunglasses and a camouflage hat would shout something and the fans on our side of the stadium would snicker.

At one point, Suz turned to me and said:

“I think I’m losing the hearing in my right ear.”

“What?” I asked.”

“I think I’m losing the hearing in my right ear,” she repeated.

“I can’t hear you,” I said. “The fans behind you are too loud. What did you say?”

“I said I think I’m losing the hearing in my right ear,” she said.

“Oh,” I said. “Yeah.”

As I was leaving the game, the guy in the camouflage hat excitedly high-fived me. I asked him what he had been shouting and he explained to me that he was taunting Mexico’s third base coach, who stands about ten feet to the right of the batters circle, rather than stand in the coach’s box.

“We don’t like him,” he said. “He never stands where he’s supposed to stand. And he blocks our view.”

Other highlights from the game:

• In the fourth inning, the game stopped for a few minutes when strong winds blew dirt from the field into the stands. After the wind died down, everybody in the first ten rows behind home plate stood up and dusted themselves off. Then the game resumed.
• Former Rockies 3B and former Mexican National Team manager Vinny Castilla came out to coach third in the bottom of the ninth inning and got a big standing ovation. I’m pretty sure Vinny could get elected president in Mexico if he were to run.
• A ball hit by one of the Mexico players appeared to clear the left field fence, but was later ruled a ground rule double, much to the dismay of the fans (Note: when Mexico fans disagree with an ump’s call, they whistle. I’d like to see Philly fans give that a try.)
• Throughout the game, kids and adults tossed hats, shirts and balls over the fence to the players in the Mexico dugout. Without fail, the Mexican players signed the items and tossed them back. Very cool.

All in all, it was a great afternoon. And the lesson, as always, is that Mexican fans are the best. Well, except for maybe Japanese fans.

Oh, one last thing…

This season, MLB has decided that first and third base coaches need to wear helmets (much to Larry Bowa’s dismay). But during spring training games, coaches continue to sit in folding chairs set up adjacent to the dugout, with nothing in between them and the hitters. Is it me, or is that a little inconsistent?

UPDATE: For a slideshow of images of one of the Mexico pitchers warming up in the bullpen, click here. For more pics from yesterday’s game, click here.

I live in Tucson. Today and tomorrow in Tucson are “Rodeo days.” All the kids have off from school for the Tucson Rodeo so they can enjoy a long weekend of nonstop riding, roping and wrangling.

Today, there was also a parade. And not just any parade. The Rodeo Parade is the nation’s largest non-motorized parade. And, as luck would have it, the parade starts right in front of the building where I work. So I wasn’t able to get to work until afternoon.

So what did I do this morning, instead of going to work? I went to spring training, of course!

The Colorado Rockies hold spring training at High Corbett Field, which is located inside a public park that also features a gold course and a zoo. I walked down to the facility and watched as the Rockies players took batting and fielding practice. The weather was about 75 degrees and sunny.I talked to Rockies president Keli McGregor, who was quoted this morning in the local paper saying he hoped the Rockies could stay in Tucson, even though the White Sox are angling to skip town.

Here’s what McGregor told the AZ Daily Star:

“Two teams is not ideal,” he said. “I’d like to think we would have three teams with an eventual expansion to four or five.” One possibility is that the Reds could replace the White Sox in Tucson.

McGregor told me it was too early to speculate about the Reds coming to Tucson, but that the city seems eager to find a way to keep spring training here. I thanked him for taking the time and gave him a handful of Umpbump stickers.

That’s right, Umpbump has stickers. We had them printed up over a year ago and haven’t done much with them since (though I did stick them all over the subway stations in Manhattan).

Two more people who got Umpbump stickers were baseball card collectors Larry (who didn’t give me his last name) and Jon Hanford. Larry, who is from Huntsville, Ala., says he got his first baseball card in 1950 — an Elmer Valo. He says he owns over 115,000 signed cards and over 2 million total.

Hanford was at spring training with his dad. He is a high school senior and is hoping to attend Hofstra in the fall. He says he wrote his college admissions essay about card collecting. He says he and his dad got to Phoenix on Tuesday and their trip got off to a good start.

“We were getting the rental car at Hertz and we ran into Juan Rivera,” he said. “I had my cards with me so I got him to sign it. He’s generally pretty tough to get, and the Angels are the least fan friendly team when it comes to getting autographs.”

Hanford says he started collecting baseball cards in 2000 and starting collecting autographs a couple of years later. He says he has about 1,000 autographed cards and over 12,000 total cards. He says he enjoys “the thrill of the chase.” Today he got autographs from Marcus Giles, Garrett Atkins and Brian Fuentes. And he got a free Umpbump sticker.

One of the Rockies players walked away with an Umpbump sticker, too. I noticed Troy Tulowitzki leaning up against an outfield fence, having a conversation with one of the other players (they were talking about a new bat they had tried out in batting practice — a B45). So I went up to say hi. I wasn’t sure if I should address Tulowitzki as “Troy” or “Tulo.” Everybody else was calling him Tulo.

“Troy,” I said. “Can I give you something?”

He stared at me. “Okay,” he said.

“I’m a big fan,” I said. (That’s not 100 percent true, but not a total lie.) “I write for a baseball website called Umpbump.com. This is one of our stickers. Check us out sometime. And good luck this season.”

He stared at me some more. Then he stared at the sticker. I started to walk away.

“Umm…thanks,” he said.

“You’re welcome!” I said.

And he was.

It appears that yes, great minds do think alike. Or perhaps it’s just that when pitchers and catchers report on Valentine’s Day, the true seamhead can’t help but make the obvious connection.

At any rate, hot of the heels of Nick’s post on the subject, I submit for your approval today’s Boston Metro Column: Feeling the Springtime Butterflies. Looking at the AL East as a whole, there’s plenty of reasons for Red Sox fans to be all of a-twitter about their team today.

Random note: I can’t tell you how refreshing it feels to go back to writing columns about baseball. As Madonna put it so well:

I made it through the wilderness
Somehow I made it through
Didnt know how lost I was
Until I found you

I was beat– incomplete
I’d been had, I was sad and blue
But you made me feel
Yeah, you made me feel
Shiny and new

Here’s to feeling shiny and new! Thanks, baseball!

(And here’s to buying cute Red Sox tees with hearts on them.)

Today is Valentine’s Day, a day for loving the ones you already love, but also for loving the ones you hope to love even more in the near future. So it’s fitting that this year, Valentine’s Day is also the day that pitchers and catchers report, bringing an end to the deadest two weeks in American professional sports, and signaling that spring is finally here.

Because spring training is baseball’s time of love. There is plenty of love to go around for both the veterans you already love, and the young prospects you hope to love very soon. It is a time when every aging veteran has just come back from a new conditioning program and looks better than he has in years. Every rookie seems to have a bit of pop in his bat or a fastball with some good late movement. Everyone seems to have an shot to make the team, and every team seems to have a shot to make big things happen.

What is Spring Training?

Spring Training is Ryan Dempster guaranteeing that the Cubs will win the World Series this year.

It is 2-time AL MVP Juan Gonzalez showing up in the Cardinals camp as a non-roster invitee, two years removed from his last pro season, in which he managed to get only one at-bat.

It is Manny Ramirez embarking on a grueling new workout regimen, promising to be on time to spring training, and boldly declaring that he wants to “be like Julio Franco and play until I’m 48.”

It fans dreaming just how good Clay Buchholz or Joba Chamberlain might be this year.

Spring Training is teams like the White Sox and Astros actually thinking they have any chance of contending. And really, who’s to tell them that they don’t?

Now I know somewhere in the back of my mind that not quite everything is perfect in Baseball Land, and that there was some pretty nasty business going down on Capitol Hill yesterday. And I’ll admit that I myself was riveted to the screen watching it.

But that was before. That was what we clung to for some semblance of entertainment during the dark and dying days of winter.

Today pitchers and catchers have reported, and I am already forgetting. Now there is only the crack of bats, the smack of leather on leather, blue skies, and the smell of fresh green grass. It is officially springtime, baseball is back, and anything seems possible.

Today is “Patriots Friday” here at my workplace, a typical, cubicle-filled affair in an office park not too far from Boston. “Wear your Patriots gear to work this Friday!” commanded the HR folks in their ever-sunny way, “Show your support! Go Pats!”

I complied, of course, and am sitting here in my Tedy Bruschi jersey. Outwardly, I am in every way the loyal Patriots fan.

Secretly, though, it is all an act.

Yes, 17-0 is, in local parlance, wicked awesome. Yes, I’m very happy to be in the AFC Championship game for the fifth time in seven years. Yes, all those flashy offensive records are pretty cool.

But inside, I am as an empty husk. Inside, I yearn only for one game, and it is not the Super Bowl. No.

It is Opening Day.

Under this football jersey, I wear the tee-shirt of my Red Sox of Boston. Invisible beneath the 54 is another number: 58. Hidden behind the block letters B-R-U-S-C-H-I, I wear the name of another man: P-A-P-E-L-B-O-N.

For the baseball fan, late January is always a time of quiet desperation. The hot stove season is largely over, yet even Truck Day seems hopelessly far away. One begins to wonder, in the long, dark nights, whether pitchers and catchers will ever report. Just as people with seasonal affective disorder require an expensive sun-lamp to get them through the short, dreary days, baseball fans need some sort of sound machine to pipe the crack of the bat and the pop of the mitt into the silent, midwinter air.

Baseball fans, I do not have such a machine. But I do have the baseball photos of the Library of Congress, conveniently archived on Flickr.

Peace be with you.

Recently, the Arizona Daily Star* reported that the Tucson Sidewinders are one step closer to moving to Reno.

The Sidewinders aren’t drawing well in Tucson and Reno has offered to build the team a $20 million park.

Why is attendence down in Tucson? That’s up for debate, though one league official has his own ideas.

From the AZ Daily Star:

“You have to consider the fact there’s spring training there, and there’s an oversaturation,” he said. “Tucson is dynamically different (from other PCL markets) because there’s a strong winter population. You’ve also got the other dynamic that people leave to get away from the heat in the summer.”

Umm, actually, scratch that. You do not have to consider that there’s an oversaturation. I mean, does that make any sense? No, it doesn’t.

The reason Tucson fans aren’t going to minor league baseball games in the summer isn’t because they’re tired of baseball once spring training ends.

More likely, it’s because the Sidewinders’ stadium in on the outskirts of the city, in an area that could at best be described as inconvenient. There’s little reason to go to a Sidewinders game besides the game itself. No surrounding restaurants or shopping. If they had built the stadium downtown, like many people suggested, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation now.

But whatever. If the Sidewinders move to Reno, there will be no public outcry. Tucson will survive without minor league baseball.

What will be truly tragic, though, is what will happen next.

The Sidewinders moving to Reno will likely mean the end of spring training baseball in Tucson. Both the White Sox and Diamondbacks play their spring training games at Tucson Electric Park. And the White Sox have already indicated that they want out. But don’t worry, the White Sox have promised to find a replacement tennant before they go. And according to the AZ Star, “the current favorite to replace the White Sox are the Monterrey Sultans of the Mexican League.” Great.

When the White Sox go, that will force the Diamondbacks to find a new home, too, as Tucson Electric Park will likely soon be converted to a concert venue.

That leaves only the Rockies, who play at High-Corbett Field, in Reid Park. The Rockies could stay in Tucson. But if every other Cactus League team is playing in the Phoenix area, don’t count on the Rockies to continue to make the two-hour drive north.

You’re probably thinking, what’s wrong with concentrating all the Cactus league in the Phoenix area?

The answer is, Phoenix blows. Tucson is way, way cooler. It’s got a small town feel, but with great restaurants and bars. It’s like the difference between visiting Orlando, where everything is new and uniform, and Dodgertown, where everything is authentic.

Plus, Tucson is actually cooler than Phoenix — by an average of about 5 degrees.

Of course, I’m biased. I live and work in Tucson. But as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing like spring training baseball in Tucson. And soon, it will be gone.

*Full disclosure: I work for the AZ Daily Star. I cover features and nightlife.

Is it opening day yet? Because there’s only so much that one can write about games that don’t count. Thank god for Mia and Nomar popping out those babies and Steinbrenner excommunicating his son-in-law, or else this blog might have gone out of business entirely.

And if you think I’m the only person stretching for storylines in this last weekend of spring training, check this out.

Yesterday, the Boston Globe’s story stealing Dan Shaughnessy wrote an entire column about a media lunch with Daisuke Matsuzaka. What did we learn?

When the waitress came around, Matsuzaka said, “Iced tea, please,” in English, then “crunchy chicken wrap, cole slaw,” again in English.

He has great posture and perfect manners. He kept his napkin on his lap at all times and did not start eating until everyone at the table was served. He drank his iced tea through a straw.

Thanks Dan. That’s info I couldn’t have lived without.

Then there’s the LA Times’ Steve Springer and Bill Shaikin, who today bring us the story of new Dodger Luis Gonzalez, who apparently got lost on his way to the ballpark.

Outfielder Luis Gonzalez, signed as a free agent in the off-season, was shaking his head as he stood as his locker stall Thursday evening after his drive to Dodger Stadium.

“I don’t know how many interstates I was on,” he said. “I’m glad I have a navigation system.”

Interstates? Where had Gonzalez come from?

“Manhattan Beach.

Maybe that story is funnier if you’re from L.A. But I doubt it.

Finally, we’ve got the biggest ink waster of them all, the guy who prints song lyrics at the end of his blog posts, Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter David O’Brien, who brings us not one, but TWO crazy stories about Andruw Jones. The first one involves a clever batting practice jersey:

By the way, Andruw took batting practice wearing a jersey with “Dos Cinco” instead of his name above his No. 25. I’ll be stunned if he’s wearing it when they come back on the field for the game.

That won’t fly with Bobby, who doesn’t even let players wear their sunglasses on top of their hats when they’re taking batting practice. But for B.P., on the last day of spring in Florida, and with Andruw, the manager let it slide.

Wow. That would almost be cool if it hadn’t already been done.

Then there’s this story of an exchange between Jones and Braves manager Bobby Cox that had O’Brien “just about on the floor, laughing so hard”:

A few of us are talking to Bobby Cox in the dugout and Andruw comes off the field during batting practice to get a drink of water.

“Play short today?” he asks Cox, the 1,000th or so time that Andruw has asked the manager about the possibility of the Gold Glove center fielder getting to play shortstop, where Andruw often takes ground balls in batting practice.

“Free agent year, I don’t think I should,” Cox says, laughing.

“[Bleep] free agent,” Jones answers, and spits out a mouthful of water. “It don’t mean nothing.”

Cox laughs and says, “That’s what I say. We’re on the same page, Andruw.”

I guess you had to be there.

Seriously, is it time for real baseball yet?

Dodgertown at last!

After driving more than 1000 miles criss-crossing back and forth across Florida for 5 days, we finally arrived in peaceful Vero Beach - a sleepy little town that time is already starting to forget. Once a popular vacation town, Vero beach is increasingly becoming a retirement community as the tourists stop coming, lured away by much ritzier resorts further down the coast.

When we arrived yesterday evening we drove down to the beach and along the town’s main street, which looks much the same as it must have in the 1950s. Only now, half the storefronts are vacant, and half the beachfront hotels are boarded up.

After next year, the Dodgers will be gone too.

But for now they are still here. This morning we drove down the highway to Dodgertown, which has been the spring training home of the Dodgers for 60 years, and took in the last game of spring training. Like Vero Beach, Dodgertown has long become an anachronism. It is the relic of a bygone era, a time when other teams were training in the Caribbean, and Walter O’Malley bought an old abandoned naval base for a song and turned it into a slice of baseball heaven.

Unlike every other team’s spring training facilities, which are little more than a few fields and offices, Dogertown is literally an entire town, complete with streets named after famous Dodgers of yore, a complex of bungalows where the players live, its own post office, its own golf and tennis courts and olympic-size pool, and even its own elementary school - Dodgertown Elementary, which is supported by donations from the Dodgers and is often visited by Dodgers players who read to the children or help them with their studies.

In an age of extreme commercialization of the game and reclusive superstar players with superstar egos to match, Dodgertown harkens back to an earlier time when players were more accessible and the game was more intimate. At Dodgertown, fans are allowed to wander the complex at will, walking among the practice fields and batting cages and watching the players stretch, warm up, and run laps before the game. There are almost no advertisements anywhere. The press box is an open seating area in the middle of the stands, and there are no dugouts - just two sets of two benches on either side of the field, so fans in the first row are literally sitting one row behind the players and can hear all their conversations and even chat with them during the game.

The fans at Dodgertown seem to understand that in exchange for this greater intimacy with the players they should be more respectful. At every other park we visited this trip, as soon as fans saw a player they would mob him and shove pens and balls and programs in his face to get autographs. But at Dodgertown, there were hardly any autograph seekers, and most people just wanted to chat with players rather than demand their signatures or pictures with them. When Tommy Lasorda appeared at the Mets homefield a few days ago, he was mobbed the entire game by a constant stream of fans, mostly wearing Mets gear, all trying to get an autograph or a picture. But when Tommy appeared in Holman Stadium today, people just said “hi” to him or left him alone to watch the game in peace. Fans expect to find themselves mingling with players and living legends in Dodgertown, and treat it as a matter of course.

Everything about Dodgertown is clean and classy, and rich with legacy and legend. These are the exact same fields that Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, and Sandy Koufax trained on. And they look just the same now as they did then. The buildings are old, but perfectly maintained, and the grounds are unchanged but spotlessly groomed. Everything is shining green and white and blue, and one is reminded of exactly why the Dodgers were the classiest organization in all of sports for decades, at least until Fox bought the team in 1997.

But two years from now, all of this will be gone. In spring 2009, the Dodgers will move into their new home in Surprise, Arizona, a complex that they will share with the Chicago White Sox, and which will undoubtedly be fully part of 21st century baseball, with its luxury boxes, its blaring rock music, its off-limits, state of the art training facilities, its advertisements on every free square inch, its sullen superstars, its lack of peace, and solace, and soul.

And if you look closely, you can already see signs of Dodgertown starting to slip away back into the past, and into the land of memory. This year, the Dodgers moved their single-A minor league franchise out of Dodgertown, switching affiliation to the Great Lakes Loons of the Midwest League, and the Vero Beach Dodgers became the Vero Beach Devil Rays, so starting April 6, there will be future Devil Rays playing on the fields of Dodgertown.

Dodgertown is also a lot emptier nowadays. Back in the 1950s, there used to be as many as 700 ballplayers living and training at Dodgertown each spring, but these days there are only about 100, most of whom live offsite in fancy condos, so many of the bungalows are unoccupied.

And with the Dodgers moving away, the McCourts have clearly decided not to put anymore money into Dodgertown than they have to. Although Holman Stadium is still a gorgeous place to watch a ballgame, the seats are rusty and look like the same ones that have been there since the place was built in 1953. This year, the McCourts decided to stop maintaining the golf course, which is now almost unrecognizable, and heart-shaped lake that Walter O’Malley had made and named after his wife Lynn is increasingly less heart-shaped as it is no longer dredged annually.

The phrase I heard most from the friendly staffers at Dodgertown - many of whom have worked here for their entire adult lives - was “Well, we still have one more year left.” It was a curious shared denial, as if it is not worth thinking about the fact that the Dodgers will be gone until at least next spring. But gone they will be, and although I heard several people say that another team will surely want to come to a place as beautiful as Dodgertown, Vero Beach is pretty out of the way, and all the other teams already have spring training homes.

The fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers made “Wait ’til next year” their famous slogan in the 1950s, as team after Dodgers team would steamroll through the National League, only to lose to the Yankees in the World Series, before the losing streak was finally broken in 1995.

But here at Dodgertown, on the same fields where those legendary Brooklyn teams once trained, everyone except for Frank McCourt is wishing from the bottom of their broken blue hearts that next year will never come.