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[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/nyregion/thecity/25tuss.html?_r=1&oref=slogin]Link, from the NY TImes[/url]
By JEFF VANDAM
Published: February 25, 2007
Among the scores of waxen figures draped over couches, standing at attention or, in the case of Britney Spears, climbing poles within Madame Tussauds New York on West 42nd Street, the New York Yankees have four. Derek Jeter stares fiercely from a batter’s box as George Steinbrenner, smiling in a blazer and turtleneck, looks on; on another floor, Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio strike classic poses. (Mickey Mantle is being repaired; his head popped off when some youngsters knocked him over.)
Yet nowhere among the 204 figures at the museum, which opened in 2000, is there a single New York Met. For years, visitors have been offering complaints and suggestions to museum staff, and now, it seems, a Met will finally arrive, with an unveiling scheduled for April 2, a month after the start of spring training exhibition games this week. The possibility that a wax Met would be installed at the museum was reported in Crain’s New York Business.
As for who the lucky Met will be, the museum is mum.
“What I can share with you is that there’s a figure in production right now,” said Stacy Shuster, director of sales and marketing. Until now, she added, no Met has been included among the wax figures because there has not been a clear favorite among the players proposed.
And as for the lucky player slated to be immortalized in wax? “It will,” Ms. Shuster said, “be a current Met.”
Beyond that morsel, she would say only that the Met in question is not bald, a detail that categorically rules out both Mr. Met, who has a baseball for a head, and Carlos Delgado, the slugging first baseman, who also sports a shorn look.
The wax museum does not keep figures on how many people requested a Met, but Ms. Shuster characterized the number of responses as “loads.” Whomever the statue will represent, it will cost $150,000 to produce and is currently under construction in London, home of the original Tussauds.
Early last week, a few Mets fans who were leaving the Mets Clubhouse store on West 42nd Street, just a couple of blocks from the museum, offered their thoughts on which player the museum might choose.
“Everybody’s going to say David Wright,” said Shawn Lee, a teacher who lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Mr. Wright, of course, is the Mets’ star third baseman, a handsome 24-year-old Virginian who is the subject of pink “Looking for Mr. Wright” T-shirts available at Shea Stadium.
Given his druthers, however, Mr. Lee would prefer to see the fast-footed shortstop José Reyes sculptured in wax.
Ed Hughes, who works in publishing and was also browsing the Mets’ store, predicted that Carlos Beltrán, the hard-hitting center fielder, would be chosen. “Beltrán has hair,” Mr. Hughes said after being told that hair was apparently a prerequisite for whatever player would be chosen. “I think they’ll choose Beltrán.”
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