2001 34c Legendary Baseball Fields: Wrigley Field

U.S. #3519
34¢ Wrigley Field
Baseball’s Legendary Playing Fields
Issue Date: June 27, 2001
City: New York, NY, Boston, MA, Chicago, IL, or Detroit, MI
Quantity: 125,000,000
Printed by: Avery Dennison
Printing Method: Photogravure
Perforations: Serpentine Die Cut 11.25 x 11.5
Color: Multicolor

Vintage postcards of ten famous baseball fields are displayed on the Baseball’s Legendary Playing Fields se-tenant. Descriptive text appears on the back of each stamp.

Three of the ball fields are still in use. Yankee Stadium is known as the “House that Ruth Built.” It was built in 1922 in the Bronx, the largest stadium at that time, to hold all the fans who wanted to see the New York Yankees and Babe Ruth. The Chicago Cubs have been playing at Wrigley Field since 1916. It was there during the 1932 World Series that Babe Ruth hit his famous “called shot” home run. Boston Red Sox’s Fenway Park opened April 20, 1912, the same day the newspapers reported the sinking of the Titanic. The park is known for its tall, green, left-field wall, known as “The Green Monster.”

Tiger Stadium is the earliest of the structures to have been built, erected in 1896 on the site of a nineteenth-century Detroit hay market.

Two Pennsylvania playing fields opened in 1909.    Shibe Park hosted the Philadelphia Athletics first and then the Philadelphia Phillies. It was one of the first modern steel-and-concrete stadiums. Forbes Field, built for the Pittsburgh Pirates, was a huge ball field, boasting the longest plate-to-foul-pole distances in the National League.  

When the White Sox’s Comiskey Park opened in Chicago in 1910, on top of an old city dump, it was considered the finest baseball facility in the world.  

Beginning in 1911, the New York Giants played at the Polo Grounds depicted on the stamp. It was the location for all the games of the first “Subway” World Series in 1921.

The Cincinnati Red’s Crosley Field, which opened in 1912, hosted major league baseball’s first night game in 1935.

Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, sported a majestic, eighty-foot marble rotunda and gilded ticket windows and turnstiles. In 1960, it became the first of these legendary playing fields to be demolished.

Wrigley Field has been the Cubs’ home since 1916 and was the last major league ballpark to play only day games. Ernie Banks made his major league debut there on September 17, 1953, joining the Cubs from the Negro Leagues’ Kansas City Monarchs, and he integrated the team. His first home run came three days later. By 1954 he was the Cubs’ starting shortstop, and he spent his entire 19-year career in Chicago, from 1953 to 1971.

Banks won the National League Most Valuable Player Award in 1958 and again in 1959, the first player in league history to win it in consecutive years. In 1958 he hit 47 home runs, an National League record for a shortstop at the time. He added a Gold Glove in 1960 and made 14 All-Star teams. His line “Let’s play two,” about the joy of playing a doubleheader, became his trademark, and he repeated it in his 1977 Hall of Fame induction speech.

On May 12, 1970, Banks hit the 500th home run of his career at Wrigley Field, off Atlanta’s Pat Jarvis in the second inning, becoming just the ninth player to reach that mark. The Cubs beat the Braves 4-3 in 11 innings that day. Banks finished with 512 home runs. He never played in a postseason game, and no one with more home runs or games played can say the same.