NEW YORK -- The New York Mets held a groundbreaking ceremony Monday for a new 45,000-seat ballpark that will replace Shea Stadium in 2009 and is supposed to evoke historic parks like Brooklyn's Ebbets Field.
"The 21st-century New York Mets deserve a home befitting an emerging baseball dynasty, and they will have that in this new field," said state Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who joined Mets officials and other elected leaders at a news conference in a tent next to Shea.
The new $800 million stadium, to be built next to the current stadium in Queens, will be called Citi Field, part of a 20-year sponsorship deal between the Mets and banking giant Citigroup Inc. that is reportedly worth an average of more than $20 million annually. Mets owner Fred Wilpon declined to answer a question at the news conference about the financial arrangement.
The playing field at Citi Field will be smaller than Shea down the lines, but larger in the gaps: 335 feet to left field, 408 to center, 330 to right. Shea is 338 to left, 410 to center, 338 to right.
Shea Stadium opened in 1964 and is the sixth-oldest major league ballpark in use. The new park, like many baseball stadiums that have been built in the last dozen years, will have old-timey features like brick and limestone arches intended to evoke baseball's storied past.
The link with Ebbets Field, home to the Dodgers until they left Brooklyn for Los Angeles, will be made explicit with a Jackie Robinson Rotunda at the entrance. The rotunda will pay tribute to the former Dodger who broke major league baseball's color barrier in 1947, and will include a statue of him.
"It is my hope that as individuals and groups walk through the rotunda that they will begin to be inspired," said Rachel Robinson, the widow of the baseball great. "I hope it will spread not just some joy but some critical thinking about our society."
Elected officials who attended the news conference and then donned hard hats to pose with shovels in the dirt recalled how excited they were when the expansion Mets joined the National League in 1962, bringing National League baseball back to New York City after the departure of the Dodgers and Giants.
Gov. George Pataki said he used to take the train to watch the Mets at the Polo Grounds, where they played their first two seasons and were famously bad.
"At that point I fell in love with Mets fans, because if there was a walk in the 8th inning you'd see the entire stadium go wild, even if the Mets happened to be behind by 15 runs at the time," he said. "And it's that type of excitement, that type of fan commitment I think, that has really made the Mets a special part of the fabric of New York."
Asked about playing in the new park, Mets third baseman David Wright said he was thrilled.
"You look at these plans in this packet and you just get excited," he said.
Monday's event was largely ceremonial because construction on the new ballpark began about four months ago.
The new Mets stadium will be part of a complete transformation of the New York City ballpark landscape by Opening Day 2009.
The Yankees are building a $1 billion, 53,000-seat ballpark that is also scheduled to open in 2009, replacing the old Yankee Stadium that was built in 1923.
Shea Stadium was named for the attorney William A. Shea, who led the effort to bring the team to the city.
The stadium was the site of some of the most memorable moments in New York sports history, including the Mets' 1969 and 1986 World Series titles and the 2000 series against the Yankees.
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