Women's basketball coaching legend Pat Summitt and baseball icon Willie Mays will be featured on stamps in 2027, the U.S. Postal service announced on Nov. 9.
Summitt, who died in 2016 of early onset dementia, coached the Tennessee women's basketball team for 38 years, leading the Lady Vols to eight national championships.
She was the first college coach, men's or women's, to reach 1,000 wins, and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000. Summitt did tireless work to make sure Title IX, the federal civil rights law against sex-based discrimination in schools, was enforced to get equal funding and facilities for female athletes.
"Mom would be like, 'Oh, let's make sure this isn't about me,'" her son, Tyler Summitt, told 24/7 sports. "But I think it'll make so many people happy to see her recognized in such a way. It kind of reminds me when she got the Presidential Medal of Freedom because it's something so beyond basketball."
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Mays, known as the Say Hey Kid, died in 2024 at age 93. He was a 24-time All-Star, 12-time Gold Glove winner and two-time National League Most Valuable Player.
His stamp is designed to look like a baseball card, with a portrait of Mays as a New York Giant and a photo of Mays making his famous over-the-shoulder catch. The play from Game 1 of the 1954 World Series, known as “The Catch,” led to a New York Giants' win.
The stamp's orange background is a reference to the color that followed Mays through his career, from the New York and San Francisco Giants to the New York Mets. It also includes Mays' autograph along the bottom.
Willie Mays prepares for batting practice during spring training for the New York Giants in March 1955 at Phoenix Municipal Stadium.
