“the new phonebooks are here…”

Well okay, they are actually postage stamps, but they will make you feel like you’re somebody now. That is especially true for all of you baseball-crazed philatelists lurking out there in the interweb. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to discover that the person who has been reading this blog from NASA also collects stamps.

Possibly you are already aware of the fact that the US Post Office is celebrating the 100th birthday of the song “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” by featuring it on a first-class postage stamp. That’s pretty kool! My house is 100 years old, but something tells me the only way it will be featured on a stamp is if I create it myself using something like Zazzle.

I didn’t realize these things were coming out until I stopped into the post office yesterday to review the latest FBI wanted posters. I think the artwork (on the stamps) is first rate. The only things non-old-timey about this stamp are the self-adhesiveness and the rate. I suspect that in 1908 you could ship a piano from Joplin, Missouri to San Francisco for not much more that 42 cents. I’ve decided to not tempt fate with the USPS by including a scan of an entire stamp on my blog. After all, unlike Topps or Upper Deck, they know where I live!

Speaking of knowing where someone lives, you do realize that you can order these nifty baseball stamps online from the USPS, and they will deliver them to your doorstep- or at least to the next door neighbor’s house.

I tell you one thing friends, if Topps, MLB and the USPS ever pooled resources and came up with the concept of issuing a HUGE set of deceased baseball players on stamps designed to look like one of their baseball cards, I would start paying a lot more of my bills the old-fashioned way instead of online. Who knows, I might even begin to embrace those terrible Hallmark holidays.

– Kris