Baseball’s Aaron honored 50 years after breaking home run record

By Scott Tiffney

On July 31 in Atlanta, Ga., the United States Postal Service will celebrate one of baseball’s most historically and culturally significant players, Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron, with the issuance of a commemorative (73¢) forever stamp.

“This stamp celebrates the life and career of Hank Aaron (1934–2021), a giant of baseball both on and off the field, who rose from humble beginnings to rewrite the record books while prevailing in the face of racism,” the USPS said in the announcement of the stamp.

The first-day ceremony for the nondenominated (73¢) Hank Aaron stamp will begin at 10 a.m. Eastern Time at Truist Park, home of baseball’s Atlanta Braves, 755 Battery Ave., in Atlanta.

To register to attend the ceremony, visit the USPS online.

Issued in panes of 20 and based on original artwork by Philadelphia artist Chuck Styles in collaboration with Postal Service art director Greg Breeding, the stamp marks 50 years since Aaron broke the Major League Baseball home run record.

On April 8, 1974, in the bottom of the fourth inning against Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Al Downing, Aaron hit a 1-0 pitch over the left center field wall for his 715th home run surpassing the previous record of 714 hit by the New York Yankees’ famous slugger George Herman “Babe” Ruth.

For Styles, the opportunity to design the commemorative stamp was the second time the self-taught visual artist has worked on a project involving Aaron.

In 2021, Styles worked on the Project 70 baseball card initiative for the Topps trading card company (celebrating 70 years of Topps baseball cards) in which he and “50 other creatives, artists, musicians and influencers were selected to create their our own unique 20 card set,” Styles said.

Each artist working on the project was tasked with selecting a player and then designing a set of cards. For Styles, his subject for the project was clear.

“I wasn’t familiar with a lot of the older players like Larry Doby and Satchel Paige, and some of the really phenomenal historic players. The one player that I knew I was going to do on my set was Hank Aaron. I wanted to honor him,” he said.

It was this project that brought Styles to the attention of the Postal Service when conceiving the idea to recognize Aaron and his historic record on a stamp.

The July 31 stamp depicts Aaron from the waist up as a member of the Atlanta Braves in his right-hand batting stance, looking to his left ready for a pitch. Styles said the decision on this perspective was a conscious one by himself and Breeding to portray the baseball great in action.

“We juggled with a few portrait references of young Hank and older Hank. We finally decided to go with a portrait that could show his batter stance. I love the three-quarter view because you see a little bit of his face, but it’s not a straightforward portrait,” Styles said.

“It’s almost like a semi-action pose and something that could be legible or identifiable in a stamp format because when we look at a baseball card, a baseball card is small, but a stamp is even smaller. So I just wanted to still have an action, a pose, but at the same time have his face very recognizable in the format of a stamp.”

Noticeably absent from the portrait of Aaron on the stamp is the screaming savage patch on the left shoulder of the slugger’s Braves uniform. This omission was also a conscious artistic decision as detailed by Linn’s Washington correspondent Allen Abel in a Delivering the Mail column (Linn’s May 24, 2024).

The stamp design also includes the text “Hank Aaron” in a red stylized font just above the batter’s waist in the portrait, with “USA” and crossed baseball bats, both in white, in the upper left corner of the design.

The lettering on the stamp and the selvage portrait were done by Kevin Cantrall.

In the sheet’s selvage to the right of the pane of 20 is another portrait of Aaron, this time more representative of his historic home run. The full-body image depicts Aaron moments after his iconic record-breaking swing.

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