As the new manager of Safety Harbor’s nicest hotel, J. Wm. (Bill) Irion was enjoying the pre-spring chill in this peaceful village on the western shore of Tampa Bay. It was 1941 and he had just opened his Santo Springs Hotel for the season. Located across the street from the acclaimed Safety Harbor Spa, or Sanatorium as it was known in those days, the hotel featured telephone and elevator service, a warm comfortable environment and easy access to the spa’s healing mineral waters.
Irion, an experienced hotelier who also managed a North Carolina inn during the summer months, eagerly immersed himself into a welcoming community by helping to create something called the city’s “progressive association” whose mission was to “put Safety Harbor on the map.”
It wasn’t long before the map makers were busy.
Some 300 miles to the south, the Brooklyn Dodgers, seven months prior to winning their first National League pennant in 21 years, were set to embark on baseball’s most ambitious spring training campaign ever: 50 games covering two countries and at least six states while piling up some 8,000 miles of travel via boat, plane, train and bus. Larry MacPhail, the Dodgers’ ostentatious, yet brilliant general manager, had visions of the Dodgers playing in front of 250,000 fans before the regular season even started.
Brooklyn’s spring tour began in Cuba on February 15, but days later MacPhail’s intricate plan hit its first snag at what would be their next stop. The Dodgers had spent the previous five seasons training in Clearwater while staying at the Fort Harrison or Belleview-Biltmore and incorrectly assumed they would be able to get rooms for a shorter stay at either hotel when they left Cuba in mid-March. What they hadn’t counted on was what the Florida Hotel Commission would later call a record-breaking tourist season for the state. It probably also didn’t help that businesses weren’t always eager to open their doors to the irascible MacPhail.
Dodgers traveling secretary John McDonald was soon on a plane from Cuba’s Jose Marti Airport determined to solve the team’s impending housing problem. He would wind up in Safety Harbor just six miles from Clearwater Athletic Field where the team known affectionately as the Bums since 1937 would play home games during their two-week stay. McDonald and Iron soon worked out a deal to accommodate a party of 65 which included 36 players and wives, staff and the 10 New York newspapermen who covered the team. It probably didn’t hurt that Ada Ebbets, the sister of the Dodgers owner and still a shareholder, had spent winters in Safety Harbor. “The offer made to the team was so attractive,” wrote the Safety Harbor Herald, “it was hard for them to turn it down.”
Added the Herald, “Probably one factor largely responsible for the coming to Safety Harbor of the Dodgers is the fact that they will be supplied by fine mineral water for which the city is famous and also the team will have free access to the Santo Springs mineral water pool.” The newspaper went on to say that there was no better place for the players to heal tired muscles or sore arms.
Coincidence or not, the Dodgers may have been the majors’ healthiest club that season; they were the only major league club to have all their regulars play in 125 or more games.
These Dodgers, however, were no ordinary team. No less than seven of their players would make the All-Star team that year. They were managed by Leo Durocher a future Hall of Famer and featured three more in the lineup: second baseman Billy Herman, shortstop PeeWee Reese and outfielder Joe Medwick. First baseman Dolph Camilli would go on to lead the National League in home runs and RBI and win the league’s Most Valuable Player award that season. The group would lead Brooklyn to its first 100-win season in the modern era.
When they arrived in downtown Safety Harbor on Monday, March 17, the players received a warm embrace, but a far cry from what greeted them 31 days before in Cuba described this way by The Sporting News: “The reception to the Dodgers had all the touch of a Mardi Gras. When the delegation arrived in two Pan American Clippers, school children and soldiers paraded and there was a stop at Havana’s presidential palace where President Fulgencio Batiste received them. A cordon of motorcycles made a noisy escort.”
“DODGERS GIVEN ROYAL WELCOME” was the headline in the March 21 edition of the weekly Safety Harbor Herald. A large street banner greeted the players when they arrived at the Santo Springs Hotel in festooned cars from the Seaboard Rail Station. A newly formed band of young students performed, large welcoming signs were hung throughout the spacious lobby, Mayor L.H. Zinsser spoke, a giant key to the city was presented and afterward, a festive weenie roast was held at the bayfront home of V.M. Curtis, president of the chamber of commerce. Coffee, buns, pickles and mustard were on hand in abundance, according to the Herald. The festivities may have been a bit restrained; the team had a 10 a.m. bus the following day to take them to St. Petersburg for their first local game against the Cardinals.
It was big doings for a town with a population of 694 which two weeks before was left buzzing after the performance of Tommy the talking dog at the local school auditorium.
Not surprisingly, the New York sportswriters had their fun at the community’s expense. “The Brooklyn bunch finds the night life in Safety Harbor wearing them down,” sarcastically noted the Brooklyn Eagle. “Rousing duels of Chinese checkers provide terrific excitement.” The talk of the Dodgers’ Safety Harbor encampment was a mustache growing contest between a couple of 22-year-old first-time roommates: Reese and All-Star centerfielder Pete Reiser.
And all of it, every tedious minute of it, may have been exactly what the Dodgers needed.
“This is a nice quiet place,” wrote New York World Telegram’s Dan Daniel, “and what the doctor ordered for the Dodgers after the excitements of Havana and Cubra Libra.”
Even the Eagle came around eventually admitting, “They’re living in a comfortable hotel and the browsing (dining) is excellent with those Harry Stevens steaks MacPhail imports from New York.” Toward the end of their stay, the Dodgers were honored at an outdoor free concert, at the Safety Harbor Pavilion.
The local Herald summed up the team’s thoughts this way: “The Dodgers had a great time here especially after all the sumptuous stay in Havana where they had difficulties with the language, food and service. The simple pleasures offered by Safety Harbor were thoroughly appreciated by the team. What the players were most impressed with was the heartwarming friendliness here. Each and every citizen was always ready to extend a warm, friendly, neighborly American welcome.”
Author Laura Kepner noted that it was a welcome distraction for the city “especially with the escalating national fear of war.”
It was wonderful, but it was brief. The following spring the Dodgers resumed their early training in Cuba, but instead of returning to Safety Harbor, they held their remaining workouts in various other locations throughout Florida.
It would be another 23 years before a Dodger returned. On February 9, 1964, Jackie Robinson, already a member of Baseball’s Hall of Fame, spoke at an NAACP event as part of a tour he was making through Florida. Sadly, his appearance did not even earn a line in the local paper.