About This Stamp
The four players honored on these stamps capture our imagination for their exploits and for what they symbolize—the best of baseball. In 2012, the Postal Service salutes Joe DiMaggio, Larry Doby, Willie Stargell, and Ted Williams. Each of these Hall of Famers was a perennial All-Star selection and each left an indelible impression on the game.
Joe DiMaggio (1914-1999) led the New York Yankees to ten pennants and nine World Series titles. Many consider him the greatest all-around player of his time.
Ted Williams (1918-2002) of the Boston Red Sox was the last Major League player to bat over .400 for a single season (1941). During his stellar career, he won six American League batting titles and four home run titles. Today, “the Kid” is regarded as one of the all-time greatest hitters in Major League Baseball history.
Larry Doby (1923-2003) was the first African American to play in the American League, joining the Cleveland Indians shortly after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in the National League. He faced prejudice with dignity and courage.
Willie Stargell (1940-2001) powered the 1979 Pittsburgh Pirates, a multicultural team known as “The Family,” to a World Series title. He is also remembered for promoting harmony between players from different backgrounds.
Illustrator Kadir Nelson based the stamp art on historic photographs of the four players. Art director Phil Jordan designed the stamps.
The Major League Baseball All-Stars stamps are being issued as Forever® stamps in self-adhesive sheets of 20 (5 of each design). Forever stamps are always equal in value to the current First-Class Mail one-ounce rate. At the time of issuance, the Major League Baseball All-Stars stamps are being sold at a price of 45 cents each, or $9.00 per sheet.
Major League Baseball trademarks and copyrights are used with permission of Major League Baseball Properties, Inc. Visit www.MLB.com.
Stamp Art Director, Stamp Designer
Phil Jordan
Phil Jordan grew up in New Bern, North Carolina, and attended East Carolina University. After Army service in Alaska, he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a degree in visual communications. He worked in advertising and in design at a trade association before joining Beveridge and Associates, Inc., where he provided art direction for corporate, institutional, and government design projects. A partner in the firm, he left after 18 years to establish his own design firm where he managed projects for USAir, NASA, McGraw-Hill, IBM, and Smithsonian Books, among others. He was Design Director of Air & Space/Smithsonian magazine for 15 years. His work appeared in numerous exhibitions and publications such as Graphis and Communications Arts. A past president of the Art Directors Club of Metropolitan Washington, he was an art director for the U.S. Postal Service from 1991 to 2014. A resident of Falls Church, Virginia, he is a retired glider pilot and a member of the Skyline Soaring Club.
Stamp Artist
Kadir Nelson
Kadir Nelson, an award-winning American artist and author, has been drawing since the age of three. His paintings can be found in galleries, museums, and private collections worldwide, and in the permanent collections of notable institutions, among them the United States House of Representatives, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, and the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
Nelson has also written and illustrated more than 30 acclaimed children’s books: We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball (2009); and Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans (2011). He recently created 30 original paintings for Blue Sky White Stars, a picture book celebrating the American flag and its history, as well as original artwork for the upcoming picture book, The Undefeated (2019) written by Kwame Alexander.
An honors graduate of Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, Nelson began his career as the lead conceptual artist for the Steven Spielberg film Amistad. He was tapped by Sony to create the album cover artwork for the Michael Jackson posthumously released album, “Michael.” His artwork regularly appears on covers of The New Yorker magazine. Other clients have included Sports Illustrated, the Coca-Cola Company, The New York Times, and Major League Baseball.
Honored by the Society of Illustrators with the Hamilton King Award and multiple gold medals, Nelson has also won the Robert F. Sibert Medal as well as two Caldecott Honors, numerous Coretta Scott King Author and Illustrator awards, the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book awards, and NAACP Image Awards.
His latest design for the U.S. Postal Service is the 2019 Marvin Gaye stamp. Previous stamp designs honored Richard Wright and Anna Julia Cooper (2009); Negro Leagues Baseball (2010); Major League Baseball All-Stars (2012); Althea Gibson (2013); and Ralph Ellison and Wilt Chamberlain (2014).