Homosassa Springs Comes Courting
Charles Ebbets one of the owners and president of the Brooklyn Dodgers/Robins/Superbas, after coming to Florida for many years to hopefully improve his health decides to make camp in Clearwater. In 1922 he convinces the Clearwater doers to secure a lot, pass a referendum for funding and build a $25,000 facility for his Brooklyn club to begin training in the Spring of 1923. The team name at this time depends on the paper you read or who you’re conversing with.
While St. Petersburg’s Al Lang brokers many of the spring training deals across Florida and will for many years to come, Ebbets works though a different gentleman connected with Florida spring training. That gentleman is E. B. Casler from Jacksonville, who was engaged in the spring training commerce in Jacksonville, where Brooklyn trained in 1922. Casler would eventually move to Clearwater and served as mayor form 1938 – 40. He died a few miles north in Dunedin in 1945.
Ebbets purchases a large lot in the exclusive Harbor Oaks section of Clearwater. By Dec. 1, 1923, newspapers announce that Ebbets and his wife had arrived in Clearwater to occupy their new $40,000 mansion.
It was Ebbets vision to create the Cocoanut(sic) League for Florida Spring Training. (The legend/myth of the Grapefruit League name goes back to the Brooklyn team training in Daytona in 1915. Florida was relatively abandoned as far as spring training during WWI, so the Grapefruit moniker did not stick at that time
Clearwater clears all of the hurdles needed to build a park suitable for a major league baseball team and on Dec. 1, 1922, Ebbets announces he has closed the deal for Brooklyn to begin training there around March 1, 1923. The team has arranged to stay at the St. Elmo Hotel. The manager, A. W. McNeil is a Brooklyn native. The St. Elmo is not a high-end hotel even for Clearwater.
The hotel and the food issue in Clearwater (lack of places to eat) will have a large effect over time. The Brooklyn club will switch to the Cleveland hotel in later spring’s but that situation is little better for players used to first class lodging.
Ebbets comes down with heart trouble and dies on April 18, 1925. The playing manager Wilbert Robinson (Uncle Robby) is elected president of the club. Coming to Clearwater in the spring of 1926 many in the Brooklyn delegation, including Uncle Robby, have abandoned the hotel in favor of renting cottages locally. Ex-Dodger pitcher, Leon Cadore, acting as an agent on behalf of his real estate company, sees an opportunity for a big fish.
The West Coast Development Company, formerly known as the Hoover Interest, purchases a million acres in relatively unpopulated Citrus County. This will be the 2nd attempt of a company to develop that area. The company has backing from major investors including John Jacob Astor and Henry Plant, the man who connected the railroads to the Florida west coast. Homosassa Springs is a town near the Gulf that they are pushing to develop into a city. Cadore escorts about 29 members of the team up there on an off day to sell them on the area. Cadore also inquires with the Braves in the final year of their lease in St. Petersburg, but that doesn’t grow any legs. Uncle Robby eventually buys a lot there, as does future Hall of Fame pitcher Dazzy Vance.
Uncle Robby accepts a deal to bring the Dodgers to Homosassa for the spring of 1927. They are promised a top end ballpark which Cadore is in charge of developing, a stay in an existing new hotel that is much more attractive than their current headquarters and what seems like a ridiculous financial package. The group offers a $65,000 guarantee over five years.
Brooklyn’s gate receipts in Clearwater amounted to $900 in ’25 and $800 in ’26. West Coast promises payments of $10,000 in each of the first two years and $15,000 each of the final three. The Brooklyn team has one more year on their lease in Clearwater but will only have to pay the Chamber of Commerce $500 to break it. Robinson gets the Dodger board to agree to the move and they sign on the dotted line on April 30. 1926.
This event leads to the makings of a chain reaction for the ’27 spring season. The Browns, in Tarpon Springs, wish to move to Clearwater to perhaps offer their players more activities outside of the ballpark. Al Lang wishes to bring the three teams that do not presently train in Florida not just to the state, but to fill Pinellas County with five teams (which had four in ’26).
Al Lang wants to bring the Pirates, the Cubs and the White Sox into the state. He has designs on the Pirate locating to the mid-county town of Pinellas Park with one of the Chicago teams relocating to Clearwater. The other Chicago team will also move to the Florida west coast.
With little fanfare in the summer months, The Tampa Times on Oct, 18, 1926 announces that Brooklyn will once again train in Clearwater. The announcement comes courtesy of Clearwater Commissioner E. B. Casler, that the deal to return to Clearwater for spring training in ‘27 has been agreed upon.
While little information is publicly available, Florida reached a depression prior to the stock market crash, with a real estate bust in 1926. The company apparently informed Brooklyn that it could not live up to its financial inducements. Plus, there is no evidence that a ballpark was built in the area.
Although I’m not sure about Uncle Robby, Dazzy Vance did make his home in Homosassa until he died there in 1945. He is buried there.
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