Baseball stamp grand slam

Today at Yankee Stadium, four 39-cent stamps and 24-cent postal cards honoring Hall of Famers Mel Ott, Mickey Mantle, Hank Greenberg and Roy Campanella will be released prior to the game between the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox.

According to Ed Stephan's Baseball on Stamps Web site, "When FDR's Postmaster General James A. Farley proposed a stamp honoring baseball, to coincide with the opening of the Hall of Fame in 1939, a nationwide poll of collectors voted overwhelmingly against it.

They were over-ruled by stamp-collecting President Roosevelt who said through the nation's sports pages that he wished "every boy in America could get a first-day cover."

For more about baseball on stamps, click here.