The Los Angeles Dodgers' Tommy Lasorda is honored by the players as he walks off the field at Holman Stadium for the last time Monday in Vero Beach, Fla. After calling Dodgertown home for 60 years, the Dodgers are moving their spring training base from Florida to Arizona next year.

VERO BEACH, Fla. — His eyes red, his steps slow, Tom Lasorda waved to the fans for the final time at Dodgertown. Down in the right-field corner, his players and coaches silently gathered and formed two lines.

They had their own way of helping him say goodbye to an old friend.

Crossing bats overhead in a sacred baseball tradition, they created a tunnel for Lasorda to walk through and to close this special place the Dodgers called their spring home for 60 years.

"These guys want me to cry," the Hall of Fame manager said Monday.

He didn't, but chances are a few people in the overflow crowd did. Some of them stood in the bottom of the ninth, bidding farewell to their team — and a piece of paradise lost — as Los Angeles fell to the Houston Astros 12-10 in its last game on these grounds.

So long, Dodgertown.

"We're going to leave, but we're not leaving our memories," Lasorda told them in a pregame address, pausing between sentences. Later, he reflected: "In all probability, I'll never be here again."

Set to move next year into an $80 million complex that they'll share with the Chicago White Sox in Glendale, Ariz., the Dodgers will take away more than a team from this town of 30,000 on Florida's east coast.

In an era when spring training has become big business, this complex was more like baseball's petting zoo, where players were encouraged to chat with fans and sign their balls. To many visitors, Vero Beach was a true field of dreams.

"It is a special place," former Dodgers ace Carl Erskine said.

Eileen Conneely stopped to snap one last picture of the markers at the corner of Don Drysdale Drive and Vin Scully Way. She grew up going to games in Brooklyn and traveled down from Long Island to see the finale.

"We came just for this day," she said.

"We missed closing day at Ebbets Field in 1957," husband Tom said.

Rocky Staniford also wanted a final look. Born in Brooklyn, he's a spry 88. Wife Cricket is connected to baseball: Her grandfather, Morgan Bulkeley, was the first president of the National League.

"If it was anybody else, we wouldn't come," he said.