The future of the Baltimore Orioles’ spring training in Fort Lauderdale took a big hit Friday, and that may bode well for Indian River County in its hunt to replace the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Federal Aviation Administration told Fort Lauderdale officials they won’t agree to the city’s deal with the Orioles for a new stadium unless the team’s annual payments to the FAA increase by more than 1,000 percent. Any plans to overhaul Fort Lauderdale Stadium need to be approved by the FAA because the facility sits on airport land.

“Unless the FAA changes their mind, I would imagine they (the Orioles) would move,” he said.

Craig Callan, Dodgers vice president of spring training and minor league facilities, said, “I think that’s great news for Vero Beach. There’s all good reasons for the Orioles to be in Vero Beach, and what a ‘wow’ that would be for the community.”

Indian River County Administrator Joe Baird has been negotiating with a team for the past several months.

TROUBLE IN FORT LAUDERDALE

• The Federal Aviation Administration told Fort Lauderdale officials they won’t agree to the city’s deal with the Orioles for a new stadium unless the team’s annual payments to the FAA increase by more than 1,000 percent.
• Any plans to overhaul Fort Lauderdale Stadium need to be approved by the FAA because the facility sits on airport land.

DODGERS’ PLANS

• The Dodgers have not yet notified Indian River County whether they will leave by 2009 or 2010, though their new facility in Glendale, Ariz., is expected to open in 2009.

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Dodgers owner Frank McCourt announced that the club has finalized arrangements for their Spring Training complex in Glendale, Ariz., and barring unforeseen circumstances will play there when Spring Training begins in February 2009.

While the departure is bittersweet, especially for those who ever spent any time at Dodgertown, its official announcement is the final and long anticipated step in bringing the organization to the West Coast.

The Dodgers recently celebrated their 60th anniversary in Vero Beach, a site selected when the Dodgers still played in Brooklyn. Throughout the Grapefruit League season, the organization honored its fans, legendary players, coaches, managers, executives, and local officials as part of a month-long opportunity to say “Thank you.”

Among those honored were Hall of Fame manager Tommy Lasorda, Maury Wills, Manny Mota, Steve Garvey, Ron Cey, Rick Monday, and John Shelby, as well as Hall of Fame broadcasters Vin Scully and Jaime Jarrin. Each of the legends was given the opportunity to express their appreciation to the city and the fans for their support.

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Vero Beach — zip code 32960 — isn’t going anywhere. It may even be reincarnated as someone else’s Spring Training base. Next year, it likely will at least host some country’s pre-World Baseball Classic workouts.

But it’s farewell to Dodgertown. Barring an unforeseen construction glitch in their Glendale, Ariz., destination, “Dem Bums” will draw the Dodgertown shades with Monday afternoon’s exhibition tilt against the Houston Astros.

Dodgertown is its own oxymoron. Charming, obsolete. Scenic, blighted. Comfortable, inconvenient. Hate to leave, love to go.

It has been the crib for generations of Dodgers players, and generations of Brooklyn and Los Angeles fans who have flocked to see them at this redeveloped vacant World War II naval air base. But it’s time for them all to come out from behind the Oz curtain and join the real world. It’s time to run after the parade that has passed them by, in that new $80 million Cactus League complex they will share with the Chicago White Sox.

Time to pull the covers. But, oh, what a storybook place it was.

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The Boys of Summer sat in front of their lockers Friday morning, slowly buttoning up their white Dodgers home uniforms for the last time.

They’re all in their early 80s now. But Duke Snider, Carl Erskine and Ralph Branca will never grow old for generations of baseball fans who followed their exploits as the scrappy Brooklyn Dodgers of the early to mid-1950s.

The Boys of Summer.

Their arms may be shot, and their legs and power long gone, but there’s nothing wrong with their minds. They’re sharp as tacks.

As they dressed for the last day of Dodgertown fantasy baseball camp in Vero Beach, Fla., they talked about what this place – an old Navy base that Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley converted to a sprawling spring-training ground in 1948 – has meant to them.

How it’s going to be sad to leave these old baseball fields, bunkhouses and locker rooms where they began their careers 60 years ago as young men and rose to the top of the baseball world.

Next season, the Dodgers will move their spring-training facility closer to Los Angeles in Glendale, Ariz.

But that’s next year. Friday, they took one last walk around Dodgertown with me to relive old memories that will never die.

Erskine stood on the same mound where Branch Rickey, the legendary Dodgers general manager who brought Jackie Robinson up from the minors and integrated major league baseball, watched him pitch with an eagle eye.

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