Pity the poor batters who faced Satchel Paige, who stood 6-feet-4 inches before he stepped on the pitching mound. His lanky frame seemed to stretch vertically halfway to heaven and horizontally to home plate. Hitters had an unenviable task to decipher Paige’s offerings, a dazzling array of trick pitches and blistering fastballs, in a split second before the umpire called a strike.
Perhaps slightly less challenging was Phil Jordan and Joseph Safford’s task. They had to capture Paige’s likeness onto a 1 9/16 × 1 3/16 in. (3.97 × 3.02 cm) canvas, considerably smaller than a traditional baseball card (2 1/2 x 3 1/2 in). Designer Jordan and illustrator Safford wisely chose a famous posed photograph of Paige as their image for the 2000 United States Postal Service (USPS) “Legends of Baseball” series.[i]
The elegant black and white photograph, part of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library archives, shows Paige in his Monarchs jersey, with a portion of Kansas City Municipal Stadium’s grandstand and bleachers above his shoulders. Safford blurred the stadium from the stamp’s background, giving it a ghostly appearance. A brownish-orange color, rather than a gray or blue tint, resembles the twilight sky of a day/night doubleheader.
Devotees of monochrome photography laud the contrast of opposites, but the regal uniform, with red accents atop the blue sleeves and gray front, is the true highlight. Paige’s angled left arm reveals only half of the Monarchs’ logo patch: fittingly, the letter «K» in «KC» is revealed to the viewer, perhaps foreshadowing the fate of the hitter.
The series depicted 20 of the game’s greatest stars, including Roberto Clemente, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Jackie Robinson, previous subjects of USPS stamps in the 1980s. Besides Robinson and Paige, fellow Negro Leaguer Josh Gibson is part of the panel, a veritable roster of inner circle Hall of Famers.
Curiously, the 33-cent issue was not the first postage stamp to honor Paige. St. Vincent and the Grenadines, a small archipelago in the Eastern Caribbean with little baseball history, issued two in the 1990s. As the 1980s baseball card fever seized the United States, Grenada published a 90-stamp series (10 panels with nine stamps apiece) featuring current and former players.[ii] Billed as collectors’ items, the series inspired its neighbor to follow suit.
The first St. Vincent & the Grenadines set, in 1992, was part of a “Baseball Hall of Fame Heroes” set. Carrying a face value of $4 Eastern Caribbean Dollars (ECD), the equivalent of $1.33 USD, the stamp features a photograph of an older, more determined Paige.[iii] The orange background darkens from the top to the bottom, in a style that may have influenced the USPS.
Five years later, the country published a “Legacy of Jackie Robinson” set to honor the 50th anniversary of his National League debut.[iv] The $6 ECD stamp is accompanied by 16 others, each celebrating a Black Hall of Famer, including Paige (wearing a St. Louis Brown hat), Ernie Banks, Roy Campanella, Willie Mays, and Henry Aaron, who similarly played in the Negro Leagues before joining Organized Baseball.
The ”commemorative collector’s edition” model enticed other nations despite their own lack of baseball history.
Perhaps the most esoteric issue comes from Turkmenistan, a Central Asian republic and former member of the Soviet Union. Titled “Baseball Stars of the 20th Century,” the 1999 nine-stamp panel features Paige, Ruth, Yogi Berra, Lou Brock, Tommy Lasorda, Stan Musial, Cy Young, and Richie Ashburn, each with miniature photographs atop memorabilia drawings. Paige’s stamp features a sepia version of the same photograph later used by the USPS. Each unit had a 120.00 Turkmenistani Manat (TMM) value, approximately $4 USD.[v]
Kyrgyzstan designed a nine-stamp set of baseball players in 2005. Ruth, Robinson, Ty Cobb, Duke Snider, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, and Gibson join Paige, whose wistful photograph while resting against the brick bullpen wall of Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium was taken in 1948, his first season in the majors.[vi]
In 2013, Uganda published a lengthy stamp series of “Famous People of African Origin,” that included four baseball players: Mays, Don Bankhead, Larry Doby, and Paige. Mays and Bankhead carried an 1,800 Ugandan shilling (51 US cent) denomination whereas Doby and Paige commanded 7,500 Ush ($2.11 USD). A light blue background with a red silhouette of the African continent accompanies each drawing. Paige’s Monarch photograph is again the model, this time with vibrant cerulean and crimson shades.[vii]
While less known than baseball cards, these stamps are more plentiful and affordable, giving collectors a good entry point into both Paige memorabilia and philately
[i] “33c Satchel Paige single,” Smithsonian National Postal Museum, https://postalmuseum.si.edu/object/npm_2000.2020.505
[ii] “Grenada Baseball Stamps,” Beckett.com, https://www.beckett.com/baseball/1988/grenada-baseball-stamps/
[iii] “Baseball Stamps: St. Vincent, 1992,” Baseball Is My Life, https://baseballismy.life/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/1992-st-vincents-hall-of-fame-heroes-satchel-paige.jpg
[iv] “Baseball Stamps: St. Vincent, 1997,” Baseball Is My Life, https://baseballismy.life/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/1997-st-vincent-sports-legends-jackie-robinson.jpg
[v] “Baseball Stamps: Turkmenistan, 1999” Baseball is My Life, https://baseballismy.life/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/1999-turkmenistan-baseball-stars-of-the-20th-century.jpg
[vi] “Baseball stamps: Kyrgyzstan, 2005,” Baseball Is My Life, https://baseballismy.life/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2005-kyrgyzstan-legends-of-baseball.jpg
[vii] “Baseball stamps: Uganda, 2013,” Baseball Is My Life, https://baseballismy.life/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2013-uganda-famous-people-african-origin-3913-3916.jpg
