We’re moving! Our new address will be 1705 19th Place Suite C-1 Vero Beach, Florida 32960. Keep an eye out for us…

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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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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According to published reports, the Baltimore Orioles signed an option with Indian River County in Vero Beach, Fla., to replace the Los Angeles Dodgers in the Dodgertown area. It’s not clear when the Orioles would move into the new spring training headquarters, since the Dodgers are currently waiting for a new spring training facility to be built in Glendale, Ariz.

“I have an option agreement with a Major League Baseball team, where I can only speak to that particular team,” Baird said Wednesday.

It is uncertain when the Orioles would move to Vero Beach because the Dodgers have not said when they’re moving to their new site in Glendale, Ariz. Dodgers Director of Public Relations Josh Rawitch said last week it likely will be a few weeks or more before they can determine a date, because Glendale still needs to approve the construction timeline recently provided by the construction manager.

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While strolling the Vero Beach Oceanfront yesterday around noon with my lovely wife, we both heard two very loud ‘booms’, which sounded like they came from under the beach. Very odd. So after a few minutes of discussing the possibilities that the ghosts of some apparently ill-resting pirates had fired off a couple rounds from the galleons of their treasure coast wrecks, it was welcome news to read the headlines this morning that what we heard was actually the Space Shuttle Endeavour breaking the sound barrier as it headed toward a landing at Kennedy Space Center. Not as intriguing as the pirate story, but great compared to what we witnessed many years ago with Discovery…