The Baseball Hall of Fame announced Wednesday that it has allowed Andre Dawson to recast his plaque without a logo on his cap.
Dawson was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010 with his plaque sporting a Montreal Expos logo. The blank cap option was not offered until four years later.
“The Hall of Fame Board of Directors voted unanimously to provide Andre Dawson with the option of having no logo on his Hall of Fame plaque, which will be recast to reflect his wishes,” Baseball Hall of Fame chairman of the board Jane Forbes Clark said in a statement. “This decision gives Andre a choice that he would have taken if it had been available when he was elected in 2010, just four years prior to the formal implementation of that alternative.”
Per the Baseball Hall of Fame, no other changes will be made to the plaque.
“I extend special thanks with much appreciation to the Hall of Fame Board of Directors for a blank cap, which allows me to represent each club fairly,” Dawson said, per the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Dawson, 71, played his first 11 Major League Baseball seasons with the Expos before joining the Chicago Cubs as a free agent in 1987. He won the National League MVP in his first season with the Cubs and spent six seasons in Chicago before finishing his career with two-year stints with the Boston Red Sox and then-Florida Marlins.
“I always felt that I was a Cub in the Hall of Fame, I just had the ‘M’ on the cap,” Dawson said Wednesday, per the Chicago Sun-Times. “That’s what I always related to. That’s where my heart was.
“… All along, I just felt that the process should have allowed me to have some sort of say so. And for years, I just disregarded trying to entertain it at all. It was what it was. And once the protocol started to change, where players were picking they didn’t want to wear an emblem, I felt that I just needed to right the wrong. Because I wasn’t given that opportunity, against what my wishes would have been.”
An eight-time All-Star and eight-time Gold Glove winner, Dawson batted .279 with 438 homers and 1,591 RBIs in 2,627 career games with the Expos, Cubs, Red Sox and Marlins.
