Thursday, July 8, 2021

USPS Take Me Out To The Ball Game

USPS in 2008 issued a commemorative first day stamp entitled "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", which alludes to the lyrics of the famous baseball ditty.

 “Take me out to the ball game. Take me out with the crowd. Buy me some peanuts and cracker jack. I don’t care if I never get back. Let me root, root, root for the home team. If they don’t win it’s a shame. For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out, at the old ball game.”

This first day cover stamp is affixed to a maxi card that depicts Stanley Anthony Coveleski, one the early standouts in baseball lore.

 Stanley Anthony Coveleski (born Stanislaus Kowalewski, July 13, 1889 – March 20, 1984) was an American right-handed pitcher in Major League Baseball who played for four American League (AL) teams between 1912 and 1928, primarily the Cleveland Indians. The star of the Indians pitching staff, he won over 20 games each year from the epidemic-shortened 1918 season through 1921, leading the AL in shutouts twice and in strikeouts and earned run average (ERA) once each during his nine years with the club. The star of the 1920 World Series, he led the Indians to their first title with three complete-game victories, including a 3–0 shutout in the Game 7 finale. Traded to the Washington Senators after the 1924 season, he helped that club to its second AL pennant in a row with 20 victories against only 5 losses, including a 13-game winning streak, while again leading the league in ERA.

In 1929, after leaving major league baseball, Coveleski relocated to South Bend, Indiana. There, he ran Coveleski Service Station for a time but closed the business during the Great Depression. He became a popular member of the community in South Bend, providing free pitching lessons to local youths in a field behind his garage. In 1969, Coveleski was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans' Committee alongside 1920s pitcher Waite Hoyt. Of his introduction into the Hall, he said, "I figured I'd make it sooner or later, and I just kept hoping each year would be the one." In addition to Coveleski's induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, he was inducted into the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame in 1976. In 1984, the minor league baseball stadium in South Bend, Indiana, was named in his honor.

His health declined in later years, and he was eventually admitted to a local nursing home, where he died on March 20, 1984, at the age of 94.

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