http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/16/sp...087&ei=5087%0A
Main Gate to Citi Field a Tribute to Robinson
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
April 16, 2008
About a decade ago, Sharon Robinson set down the nine values that defined her father, Jackie, and, by extension, guided her family: citizenship, commitment, courage, determination, excellence, integrity, justice, persistence and teamwork.
Those lessons will soon be memorialized on the interior walls and terrazzo floors of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, the grand entrance hall to Citi Field, the ballpark that the Mets plan to complete by the end of the year.
The rotunda, with its brick archways, is an homage to the signature architectural feature of Ebbets Field, where Robinson broke major league baseball’s color barrier in 1947 and played for 10 seasons. It will serve as the stadium’s main gate but is intended to honor the life of Robinson, whom Fred Wilpon, the Mets’ principal owner, first met when Wilpon was a 16-year-old batting-practice pitcher for the Dodgers in the early ’50s.
“At my stage in life, you’re looking for permanence, you’re looking for things that will shore up the future,” Rachel Robinson, who at 85 is still advancing her husband’s civil rights activism through a vibrant educational foundation in his name, said at a news conference at Shea Stadium to announce the plans for the rotunda.
“What the rotunda means to me is we’ll have evidence of the progress we’ve made in the past and we’re going to affect future generations,” she said. “This rotunda is not just a place. It’s a stimulant, where I hope people will feel inspired and linger, and come early to the game, so they can see the rotunda.”
Later,
she walked into the rotunda for the first time. It was 61 years to the day since her husband’s first regular-season game for the Dodgers, an anniversary celebrated throughout baseball Tuesday. She looked down at the construction site, and several construction workers looked up at her in her vivid yellow jacket and applauded.
“It’s like walking into a cathedral in a way,” she said.
The Mets’ tribute to Robinson is meant to be contemplative. There will be an eight-foot blue statue of his No. 42. His values will be illustrated with enormous photos from his life to be mounted in the upper reaches of the rotunda. His famous quotation — “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives” — will be inscribed, along with the values, on a concrete strip above the archways.
“I think of it as a gathering place where people plan to come, to stand by the photos and meditate” on their lives and how they’re helping their communities, Robinson said.
Wilpon said that he expected as many as 30,000 fans a game to walk through the large plaza outside and pass through the rotunda (with its floor measuring 160 feet in diameter), and for others to come by appointment when the Mets are not playing.
“People will say, ‘I’ll meet you at the 42,’ ” he said, referring to the statue.
The rotunda has the 42 statue, but not one of Robinson, he added, “because Rachel’s idea is there are a lot of statues of Jackie and others, and sometimes the likenesses don’t look like the person.”
“Someone came up with the 42 idea, and she embraced it,” Wilpon said.
The rotunda is two or three times bigger than the one in Brooklyn that inspired it.
“But in love and feeling, it will be the same,” said Wilpon, who turns dreamy-eyed when talking about Ebbets Field.
As the rotunda evokes Robinson’s spirit, a museum is being planned at the new headquarters of the Jackie Robinson Foundation on Varick Street in TriBeCa. The foundation awards four-year scholarships of $7,500 annually to deserving minority students, and provides nurturing and other support for them.
The museum, she said, “will not just have artifacts, but it will be a gathering place.”
“Like the rotunda,” she said, “we want people to come in there, we want to have conferences and seminars.” She added: “We accept donations from everyone on every level. I’m just terrible, right? Our president is shaking her head. But we have to get there by ’09.”
It is halfway toward meeting its goal of raising $25 million, with contributions of $1.5 million each from the Mets and Citi, $1 million from the Yankees and $3 million from the Yawkey Foundation, said Leonard Coleman, the foundation’s chairman.
This week, ESPN announced that Rachel Robinson had approved the production of a theatrical film about her husband and Branch Rickey, the Dodgers’ general manager who signed him. It will be produced by ESPN Films; Robert Redford, who will play Rickey; and Baldwin/Cohen Productions.
“Like all films,” she said, “it’s taken longer than anticipated.”
Prev
location.
).... I have to say that of all the "Stadium under construction beyond the outfield" photos I have seent eh last decade plus, this one is the biggest improvement of view.... I don't know why I see it that way but I don't see it as a construction eyesore... I see it as an improvement to the backdrop.
Linear Mode
