Is This The Real Fred Wilpon?

13 Comments + Add Comment

• JPMNewYork May 25, 2011 at 12:57 pm

  Agree with all your suggestions, with the following modifications:
  1. Please add “or Trump”!
  2. Jackie Robinson can stay. He’s a New York hero. But get some Mets in there — like his teammate Gil Hodges, for instance.

  Oh, and Fred: If you’re going to open your mouth like George Steinbrenner, you have to open your wallet like him too.
  • Shamsky May 25, 2011 at 1:17 pm

    Oh, and Fred: If you’re going to open your mouth like George Steinbrenner, you have to open your wallet like him too.

    That may be the best line I’ve read in the last 48 hours. Two thumbs up!
  • Bayonne Mets Fan May 25, 2011 at 1:34 pm

    Or move Jackie into the Mets Hall Of Fame room somewhere. Maybe in a section that features how Brooklyn AND New York Giants left opening way for Mets.

    And replace that giant 42 with a giant 41
  • Annie Savoy May 25, 2011 at 7:41 pm

    JPM – You may or may not know this, but Rachel Robinson and her daughter have been to Citi Field and have seen the statue. Her daughter was very moved and grateful that the Mets had honored her father in this way. Rachel is in her 80′s and still gets around – she also went out to Dodger Stadium, but I don’t know what kind of Jackie memorabilia they have there.
• Met Maniac May 25, 2011 at 1:26 pm

  As long as that huge Dodger Blue 42 stands prominently in our Ebbett’s Field modeled stadium, Citi Field will house very little Mets karma. We went form Shea Stadium, the House of Miracles, to Citi Field, the House of Nightmares. Even when Fred goes, and he WILL go, he left his legacy in that giant tribute to the Dodgers called Citi Field.
• Metsie May 25, 2011 at 2:58 pm

  I will remind you folks who get so pissed about the Statue of Robinson that while you may be MET FANS, You are also AMERICAN!

  And like it or NOT, Jackie Robinson is much more of an AMERICAN hero than a Dodger hero!

  Just look at your posts about the affect Wilpons saying what he did will have to Carlos Beltran’s psyche!

  Do you guys have any clue what Jackie went through when he was playing and playing every bit better than Carlos Beltran or David Wright?
  HALL OF FAME better!

  Sure he played for another team, A team that LEFT US and made it possible for us to even HAVE a franchise called the Mets! Dodgers are part of that History…NY HISTORY, MET HISTORY!

  Yankees tried to stop us from becoming!
  Who were the biggest Rivals to the Yankees throughout history? The Dodgers!
  So we honor those who fought against our enemy!
  And made it possible for guys like Beltran, Reyes, Cleon Jones, Tommy Agee, Ken Singleton, Daryll Strawberry, Doc Gooden, Edgardo Alphonso, and EVERY OTHER MINORITY PLAYER who ever wore a Met uniform to play in the SAME LEAGUE as a Met.

  If that guy is not worthy of our admiration and naming a rotunda after him WHO IS?
  Gooden? Strawberry? The guys who left due to drug problems?

  Seaver ok I get it! but Who else has done as much and is actually as worthy or made as much a contribution to this countryas Jackie Robinson?
  • Annie Savoy May 25, 2011 at 7:26 pm

    Thank you for your kind words about Jackie Robinson – did you know that his wife, Rachel, is still alive and has been to Citi Field. She was very impressed and pleased with the Jackie Robinson memorabilia and said that it meant a lot to her and her surviving children for their father to have these honors.
    • JPMNewYork May 25, 2011 at 8:23 pm

      Rachel Robinson is an amazingly preserved woman; I’ve seen her on TV at several Mets commemorative events and never can believe how young she looks.

      No argument here about honoring Jackie. I think it’s entirely appropriate. I just felt from the beginning that Mets history had been slighted (actually, ignored altogether until some corrections were made) and they should have done both. The Mets were, as Metsie notes, created as the successors to both the Dodgers and Giants to carry on the National League tradition in NY. They should embody and embrace that tradition, not ignore it. I think of LA and SF as totally different franchises from the ones that played here… they may have the same names, but I think they lost the right to those legacies when they abandoned New York.
      • Annie Savoy May 25, 2011 at 8:31 pm

        Rachel and I have a mutual friend, one of my playing partners at the Yale Golf Course was the Dean of the Yale School of Nursing, Judy Krauss who knew Rachel very well. Both of them were psychiatric nurses – Judy had some great jokes about that. Don’t know how old Rachel is, but she never seems to change.
  • t agee May 25, 2011 at 8:46 pm

    Can’t argue against that. I would like to have seen the rotunda be about 1969 and 1986 but I cannot complain one iota. The triple whammy of the Ebbetts facade, Jackie’s Rotunda and the Ebbetts club right as you walk in was a little overboard though and where is the statue of Joan Payson? Gil Hodges?

    Why can’t we revive the Jackie Robinson Jazz Festival and have it at Citi?
    • Metsie May 25, 2011 at 11:25 pm

      Have you ever seen a picture of Joan? I mean really! LOL

      I get that people want to be Metsmerized when they get to the stadium and Yes Wilpon is very much a Dodger guy. I understand why people are upset.

      It has nothing to do with a rotunda….

      It has to do with the fact that the Mets have stunk since they moved into the stadium and everyone’s stomach is already turned before they get there because they know they are more likely to see the mets lose than win!

      If the Mets were playing .550 baseball no one would care about the Dodgerland in the rotunda, they would be too busy racing to get to their seats to see them play!

      There are only Two teams in NY now. The Yankees are never going to honor any tradition that is not Yankee. Mostly because they got a lot of it there is no room for anyone else.

      We won two WS since 62. About enough tradition to fill a closet off the rotunda!

      Shea was renovated at least 5 times that I can remember. Citi will be too! The Rotunda stuff is nothing but Plaster over Styrofoam, They can change it 50 times over. They do the same thing in Vegas!

      I know we are all upset about baseball (they won tonite though) but why take it out on a pretty nice stadium with a honorable purpose of honoring the Past the yankees would like to see erased from history!
• baby al May 25, 2011 at 8:40 pm

  good work annie, u spoke for any true met fan. wilponzie mob don’t let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya!
  • Annie Savoy May 25, 2011 at 8:49 pm

    Al – Thanks for the nice words – however, I just can’t take the Wilpons anymore – especially now that Fred has ‘spoken’ in Sports Illustrated and the New Yorker. Enough is enough!