Citi Field to undergo address change to honor Tom Seaver

The Mets announced today that they will be officially renaming 126th street to honor Tom Seaver. Citi Field is located at the intersection of 126th street and Roosevelt Avenue and 123-01 Roosevelt Avenue is its official address. However, once the address change is made official by the city, Citi Field’s address will be 41 Seaver Way. It has already been approved by the New York City council and the borough of Queens. This change has reportedly been in the works for awhile, since Jeff Wilpon first conceived of the idea a few years ago.

At long last, the Mets also will unveil plans in June—during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the 1969 World Champion Mets—to construct a statue in The Franchise’s likeness outside of Citi Field. The statue itself will not be unveiled this season and we will likely see it sometime in 2020.

This all comes on the heels of Seaver’s recent diagnosis of dementia and his retirement from public life, which his family announced in early March. It is unfortunate that Seaver will not be present to see the unveiling of the street and address change on June 27, but representatives from Seaver’s family will be present for the weekend ceremony commemorating the ‘69 team on June 28-30.

“We’ve been working on exploring a potential statue option for a couple of years in coordination with the [Seaver] family,’’ said Mets executive vice president and chief revenue officer Lou DePaoli. “We won’t be unveiling a statue this season. We will unveil the plans of what it will look like sometime on that [‘69] weekend.”

Tom Seaver will be the first professional athlete in New York to be honored with a statue.

“He definitely deserves it,” said former Mets catcher Jerry Grote to Mike Puma of the New York Post. “He has done a lot of good things for the people of New York — for the people who live there — and he has enchanted them for many years, so it’s only right that they do this.”