VERO BEACH, Fla. – The dorms are an abandoned naval barracks just a short, crunchy, crushed-gravel walk from the practice fields where Sandy Koufax learned to keep his front shoulder tucked in; where Jackie Robinson worked on his bunting.

In the 1950s and ’60s, there was no heating system in the dorms. And on the springtime Florida nights when temperatures dipped below 40 degrees, Dodgers and Dodger wannabes would wrap themselves in blankets and dream big-league dreams.

“The major-leaguers stayed on one side, and the minor-leaguers stayed on the other side,” Maury Wills remembers. “And the minor- leaguers’ dream was to get over with the major-leaguers.”

Wills arrived in 1951 and dreamed that dream for a dozen springs. The Dodgers didn’t want their young players getting complacent. Only after he was named MVP of the National League in 1962 did they move Wills over to the big-league side for spring training ’63.

Now 74 years old and still drilling Dodger players on bunts and base-stealing under palms and scrub pines in this teensy Florida town, he tells the story as if he has told it a million times before pausing for dramatic effect before each repetition of the punch line, “And the next spring, I was still over with the minor-leaguers!”

And he laughs.

“But you know what?” he says. “My work ethic has been great ever since. That’s what this place teaches you. Nothing is given. You have to earn it.”

Such are the lessons of Dodgertown, a cozy baseball paradise where the breeze whispers through the tops of the ancient pines, where fans enter the tiny, 6,000-seat stadium along a path lined with oversized-baseball lightposts. A place where white street signs with blue script lettering tell you you’re walking down Don Drysdale Drive, Vin Scully Way, Don Sutton Square. Where the great Dodgers of years past have always come back to teach.

But now, the quintessential spring training town is about to lose its team. The Dodgers plan to leave Vero Beach after the 2008 season, moving their spring operations to a new facility in Glendale, Ariz. They say they’re doing it so they can train closer to their fans, but everybody knows the real reasons are green, not Dodger blue.

“It just makes sense,” says Tommy Lasorda, another Dodger lifer who has known this place since it was a baby. “It makes good business sense, it’s closer to the fans, everything will be state-of-the-art. Will I miss this place? Of course. This place is special. But you know, life goes on.”

Life goes on, and more and more teams go to Arizona for spring training. As recently as 1997, Arizona’s Cactus League comprised just eight teams. After the Dodgers move to Glendale and the Cleveland Indians move from Winter Haven, Fla., to Goodyear, Ariz., for the 2009 season, there will be 14 teams that hold spring training in Arizona, compared to 16 in Florida’s Grapefruit League.

And it’s no coincidence. The teams that ditch Florida for Arizona have lots of good reason to do it – new facilities, sweetheart leases and spring training schedules that are a lot easier to manage.

“I honestly think you get more work done, because you’re not spending all your time on bus rides,” said the Yankees’ Jason Giambi, who is in his sixth Grapefruit League season but still longs for his Cactus League days with the Oakland A’s. “You show up in the morning, do the same stuff you do every day. You hit at home, you get dressed (in your uniform), you get on the bus and go play. And then, after you play your five innings or whatever, you drive back home and go lift. You have your normal day.”

With most of the Cactus League facilities concentrated around the Phoenix/Scottsdale area, travel time between sites is minimal. In the Grapefruit League, bus rides of 60-to-90 minutes are standard practice. Groggy players show up at 7:30 a.m. with pillows to catch the bus and sometimes don’t get back before sunset. Yankees manager Joe Torre works to make sure his veterans don’t make too many trips in spring training, because he doesn’t want to wear them out.

“It’s a lot of travel,” says J.P. de la Montaigne, the president of the Cactus League. “And I’m sure it’s frustrating for the fans, because they don’t get to see all the star players play.”

But while the comfort level of their big-league players is a factor, the main reasons teams move to Arizona are financial.

“We’re doing another study this season, but three seasons ago we found that 50 percent of the fans who attend our games come from out of state,” said de la Montaigne, who is originally from Wayne. “And those fans generated $220 million for the local economy.”

The Dodgers will undoubtedly offer a major boost. The new ballpark in Glendale, a Phoenix suburb set to host next year’s Super Bowl, will hold about 15,000 people. Vero Beach, a lonely old East Coast Florida town 190 miles south of Jacksonville and 135 miles north of Miami, has a population of 17,900.

What’s more, Glendale is 359 miles from Los Angeles. Vero Beach is 2,289 miles from Los Angeles. It’s no stretch to think that Dodger fans will be more likely to make the trip to see their team train in Arizona than in Florida.

“The Dodgers never made sense here anyway, not once they moved to L.A.,” Tom Nelson said.

Nelson has lived in Vero Beach nearly all his life, since his parents moved the family from Livingston when he was 3 years old. His attitude about the Dodgers’ move seems to jive with everybody else’s – it’s too bad, but what can you do?

“The sad part is, they do so much for the town,” Nelson said. “They’re so big in the community. They do so much charity work, and they’re a big part of what goes on here. We’ll miss that.”

As Nelson was talking, some Dodgers were taking batting practice on the field at tiny Holman Stadium, capacity 6,500 plus standing room. The faded red, blue and yellow plastic seats were almost completely empty. Eddie Murray, a Dodgers coach, was signing a ball for Nelson’s 5-year-old daughter, Bridget.

Around the complex, players walked from field to field on the same paved paths the fans use, stopping every two feet to sign another autograph, or to pose for a picture with a little girl, an old man, an entire family in Dodger caps.

On one practice field, Lasorda sat on a golf cart behind the batting cage, shouting encouragement in English and Spanish to the young players as they hit. Manny Mota, the great former Dodger pinch-hitter, rode by on a creaky-looking bicycle, in uniform, honking a little red plastic horn to let people know to get out of his way.

Vero Beach Mayor Tom White didn’t return phone calls for this story, but he has said publicly that he believes he will get another team to move in and take over the facility. The Baltimore Orioles have talked about moving here from Fort Lauderdale. There are whispers about the Boston Red Sox moving from Fort Myers, or the Toronto Blue Jays moving from Dunedin.

And it would make some sense for some team. Within the past five years, renovations to Dodgertown have resulted in a huge new home clubhouse, team offices and a conditioning facility behind Holman Stadium’s right-field fence.

It’s there that you’ll find “Maury’s Pit” – a mini-ballfield enclosed in a net, where last weekend Wills had current Dodgers Juan Pierre and Jason Repko working on bunts for nearly an hour after the end of their workout.

“I used to ask why they didn’t have one of those streets named after me, so they gave me this – my pit,” Wills said. “And I’m proud of that.”

But as proud as they may all be – Wills and Lasorda and Koufax and all of the other Dodger greats who still come here every year to teach – they’re not as wistful as you might expect.

“I’ve been coming here since 1951, but I’ve joined them in their thinking,” Wills said. “If we hold onto the past, we don’t make any progress. Besides, when we go to Arizona, we’ll all still be there. The Dodgers will still be there.”

Sure. They may still be there.

But there’s no way it’ll be the same.