Florida town welcomes Nationals

VIERA, Fla. — The Washington Nationals logo is everywhere at Space Coast Stadium. More than 1,500 tickets for the new club’s spring training games were purchased online within 20 minutes of going on sale.

ESPN will televise the Nationals’ first exhibition game on March 2 against the New York Mets. Ads for the Nationals’ spring training games appear in the newspaper Florida Today.

There is a new show in town for Major League Baseball’s spring training, one that local officials expect to be much bigger than those of the past.

Pitchers and catchers report today for spring training, more than four months after the Montreal Expos were relocated to the District in September. They later were rechristened the Nationals.

“We are very excited about having the Nationals here,” said Rob Varley, director of the Space Coast Tourism Council. “It will be such a better market for us than the Montreal Expos were. We think people from Washington will be coming down here to support their team and enjoy the area. We expect good things.”

But not quite everyone has gotten the message.

At a hotel in nearby Melbourne, the visitors’ channel broadcast a promotion for Florida Marlins games at Space Coast Stadium.

The channel is only two teams behind the times. The Marlins last trained at Space Coast Stadium in 2001, before the Expos arrived for the next three seasons.

The Nationals are the only major league team that trains in or near Viera. Seventeen other teams train in Florida, most of them around Tampa on the western coast or far south of Viera on the eastern coast. Twelve teams train in Arizona.

Viera, with a population of about 22,000, sits along Interstate 95 in Brevard County about 15 miles west of the Atlantic Ocean and 35 miles east of Orlando. Viera is not an incorporated municipality, although the mailing address for Space Coast Stadium is Viera. It is a planned community in a state full of planned communities, places with names such as “Celebration” and “Harmony.”

The community is the creation of the Duda family, one of the biggest producers and shippers of fruits and vegetables in the world.

The Dudas started Viera — the name means “faith” in the family’s native Slovak language — in 1989. The closest actual, well-known municipalities are Melbourne, Titusville, Cocoa and Cocoa Beach.

This is Central Florida — in an area also known as the “Space Coast” in reference to the nearby Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral.

The setting will be a big change for Washington-area fans used to spring training with the Baltimore Orioles in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Brevard County is the South, not South Florida. It sits about halfway between Miami and Jacksonville, but it is much closer to Jacksonville in personality.

Bush-Cheney bumper stickers are everywhere, and President Bush held a huge campaign rally at Space Coast Stadium last fall, landing by helicopter right on the field. He easily won Brevard County in November, getting nearly 58 percent of the vote.

Development is changing the makeup of the area, as young families looking for affordable homes move out of metropolitan areas.

“People are moving in from South Florida and Orlando,” said Andy Dunn, who until recently served as the Nationals’ Brevard County director of operations and now runs the club’s operations at RFK Stadium.

Much of the development of Viera since 1989 has been east of Interstate 95. Now, however, the focus is west, where Space Coast Stadium is located.

Surrounded mostly by farmland, swampland and government buildings, the stadium long has been the butt of jokes in baseball.

It was not uncommon in past years to see from the stadium two sights in the distance: cattle drives and smoke from what seemed to be a never-ending brush fire.

“When I first came here in 1994, we used to call it the cow palace,” Mr. Varley said.

That has changed. The most familiar sights around the stadium now are bulldozers and construction supplies and equipment.

More than 5,000 homes are planned for the area around the stadium, and one of three planned major shopping centers is under construction. There are now five golf courses within a 10-mile radius.

Nationals catcher Brian Schneider lives a little more than an hour south of Viera. He said he hopes the team stays at Space Coast because of the development going on.

“It is really taking off now,” he said. “The development is going crazy.”

There is a Wal-Mart nearby, naturally, though not just any Wal-Mart. A Wal-Mart “Supercenter” sits across the street from what is not just a Target department store, but a “Super” Target.

Central Florida may be different from South Florida, but it is still Florida: There is no shortage of convenience stores, bail bondsmen and Hooters restaurants.

However, Viera is nothing like fast-paced and glamorous South Beach — a fact Expos officials regarded as a blessing when their team trained at Viera: There are fewer opportunities for players to get into trouble.

There are nightclubs along Cocoa Beach, and casino boats docked at Port Canaveral. There is a dog track in Melbourne that recently opened a hugely successful poker room that is so busy players must take a number and wait for a seat to open.

Still, Viera and its surroundings are, by and large, tame.

Sheriff’s Deputy Richard Lee said the biggest crime problem in the area is rip-off repair and construction operations. Like much of Florida, Brevard County was hit hard by hurricanes last year, and tattered store signs along the highways attest that recovery is not yet complete.

“At one time, there were blue tarps everywhere over homes being repaired,” Deputy Lee said. “People used to joke that Florida should change its motto to the blue tarp state.”

If Viera lacks the glamour South Florida held for spring training fans, it makes a far more attractive family trip, thanks to the proximity of Orlando amusements such as Disney World and Universal Studios and Space Coast attractions like the Kennedy Space Center.

Locals take the “Space Coast” designation very seriously. The 321 area code, for example, is no accident.

When the government commission that assigns area codes held hearings about a new one for Brevard County, local resident Robert Osband suggested “321” — the final numbers in a launch countdown. That number already had been promised to a Chicago suburb, but the Florida Public Service Commission worked to get it for the Space Coast.

“The chairman of the commission loved it,” Mr. Osband said. “It really represents our identity here.”

The heart of the Space Coast is the Kennedy Space Center. Some of the most recognized images of the area are photos of people lined up along U.S. 1 or A1A to watch launches, which can be seen miles away.

There may be opportunities for fans at spring training to watch a launch. A Titan rocket is scheduled to go up Sunday and an Atlas 5 rocket March 10 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

There also are tours of the Kennedy Space Center, probably the most popular attraction in the immediate area. A bus tour of the center takes visitors by the 525-foot Vehicle Assembly Building, where the Saturn rockets and space shuttles were constructed, and to an observation tower from which space shuttle and rocket launch pads can be seen.

There are other attractions nearby. The American Police Hall of Fame & Museum shop sells miniature guillotines and copies of books like “Take the Law Into Your Own Hands — Legally.” Inside the museum is a rotunda that contains a solemn memorial to officers killed in the line of duty. Each officer’s name is carved into it, similar in style to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.

All in all, there is plenty for baseball fans to do when they are not hanging out at Space Coast Stadium watching their new team — as long as they are willing to leave the glamour of South Florida behind and embrace a more G-rated spring training experience.