Much anticipated baseball exhibition opens April 9

Philatelic Foreword by Jay Bigalke

Originally scheduled for a June 2020 opening, the Smithsonian National Postal Museum’s much-anticipated exhibition “Baseball: America’s Home Run” is opening to in person visitors April 9. It is scheduled to remain open through Jan. 5, 2025.

Besides the enormous amount of philatelic material included, what has impressed me most is how many different museums and individuals worked together to make this exhibition happen. For example, items from the National Baseball Hall of Fame are on display, and astronaut Sally Ride’s childhood baseball bat is on loan from the National Air and Space Museum.

I also am thrilled the National Postal Museum created a very detailed website for the exhibition.

There, you can see some of the objects from the Postmaster General’s Collection that have never been shown before in public. The press sheet for the 2001 Legendary Baseball Playing Fields stamps is shown as is the press sheet for some of the matching picture postal cards. I had never before seen how those press sheets were laid out, so that was a treat.

And the 2017 Sports Balls forever stamps printing plate used for the texture part of the issue is displayed on another page.

The museum says that hundreds of items from the Postmaster General’s Collection are included, which is a great thing because people are now able to see them.

I wish the postal museum much success with the exhibition, which I think will attract some sports fans to our wonderful hobby of stamp collecting.

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