The Mets are keeping Dwight Gooden’s signature — but moving it to another location and putting it under Plexiglass.
Gooden pitcher signed a wall in the Ebbets Club when he attended the April 13 opener at Citi Field, writing: “Doc Gooden/84 R.O.Y./85 Cy Young/86 W.S. champs,” according to Mets spokesman Jay Horwitz. Perturbed that a clean wall in a new ballpark had been marked up, the team at first said it planned to erase the writing. Following criticism, the team changed course.
“It’s a new building. We just didn’t want anything written on the walls,” Horwitz told the Associated Press from St. Louis before the Mets’ game against the Cardinals. “We had a lot of calls yesterday, a lot of fan stuff.”
Horwitz said the team now plans to encourage other former Mets stars to follow Gooden’s lead. “The plan is we’re going to move this to a yet-to-be determined place in the stadium, behind plexiglass,” he said. “And then when other players come back, like the Strawberrys, the Seavers and the Koosmans, we’ll have them writing similar greetings to the fans.”