Jackie Robinson Remembered as Mets Plan Move
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A ballpark advertising Citigroup will replace Shea Stadium in 2009, the Mets announced yesterday, but the team is reaching out to fans who wanted the new field to carry the name of civil rights pioneer Jackie Robinson.
In a tribute to the legacy of the famous Brooklyn Dodger, Mets officials said yesterday that the team would commission a statue of Robinson to be placed near the entranceway of its planned $800 million park, which has been named Citi Field.
The news came as the Mets held a ceremonial groundbreaking for the stadium and announced a 20-year “strategic partnership” with the nation’s largest bank that is reported to be worth up to $20 million a year. Citigroup’s chief administrative officer, Lewis Kaden, would not confirm the amount or discuss the financial arrangements of the deal.
In announcing the deal, the Mets join a growing number of franchises that have inked lucrative corporate naming rights agreements to boost revenue or pay for new stadiums, at times over the grumbling of fans who say commercialization is overwhelming professional sports. Despite some calls to name the new 42,500-seat stadium after Robinson, Mets officials said they needed to sell the naming rights to afford the $600 million the team is paying for its construction.
The Mets said that in addition to a statue of Robinson in front of the park, Citi Field would include the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, an entryway whose design will evoke Ebbets Field, the longtime home of the Dodgers in Brooklyn.
Robinson, who died in 1972, broke baseball’s color barrier with the Dodgers in 1947. He retired in 1956 and was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1962, the year the Mets played their first game. With the Dodgers in Los Angeles, the Mets have forged a close relationship with Robinson’s widow, Rachel Robinson, who heads a foundation in his name.
Mrs. Robinson joined Manager Willie Randolph, star infielders David Wright and Jose Reyes, and more than a dozen executives and elected officials, including Governor Pataki and Mayor Bloomberg, at yesterday’s ceremony. Saying she was “very pleased and honored” by the planned tribute to her husband, Mrs. Robinson expressed little disappointment that the team did not name the stadium after him. “I never expected it to be,” she said after the event.
The mayor dismissed criticism from those who pushed for the stadium to be named after Robinson. “The people who said that aren’t the ones putting up the money,” he said.
The groundbreaking ceremony took place yesterday even though construction on the new park began in August in the parking lot of Shea Stadium, which opened in 1964. While the team is footing the bill for the new stadium, the city and state are contributing more than $165 million in infrastructure improvements, and the city has issued $632 million in tax-exempt and taxable bonds, which the Mets will pay back. Citi Field is slated for completion by Opening Day in 2009.
Citigroup and the Mets are also making what officials say is a “significant contribution” to the Jackie Robinson Foundation, which is trying to raise $20 million for a museum and education center to be housed at Hudson Square in Manhattan.
The chairman and chief executive of the Mets, Fred Wilpon, said yesterday the new ballpark would also include a tribute to William Shea, the New York lawyer who was instrumental in the creation of the Mets following the departures of the Dodgers and Giants in the late 1950s. He died in 1991. None of Shea’s relatives attended the ceremony yesterday, but the family has given its blessing for a new stadium with a different name. “He’d be disappointed, but he’d understand that he had all these years and now it’s time to move on,” William Shea’s grandson, Victor Shea, said yesterday in a telephone interview.