New Jersey Doesn’t Get the Stamp of Approval

Long the butt of comedians’ jokes, New Jersey doesn’t even get a mention in the U.S. Postal Service’s World Cup commemorative package.

The souvenir set displaying commemorative stamps for the 1994 World Cup instead bears a map showing New York as the site of seven soccer games being played at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford during the month-long tournament.

For a state hardened to football teams -- the New York Giants and the New York Jets -- that won’t use its name and sports announcers telling viewers New Jersey events are in New York, it was one insult too many.

“It’s an outrage,” George Zoffinger, chairman of the New York-New Jersey World Cup Host Committee, said Wednesday.

“It’s just unbelievable because when we first put this whole thing together three years ago, the understanding was clear that it was New York and New Jersey.”

To date, all promotional materials for the World Cup games have described the location for the metropolitan-area events as “New York-New Jersey.” Zoffinger said the state host committee accepted that designation because New York’s name was needed for international marketing of the tournament, which begins June 17.

The postal service said Wednesday that was the reason the map depicts game sites in several major cities when the stadiums are really in nearby suburbs: Boston, instead of Foxboro, Mass.; San Francisco and Los Angeles, for Palo Alto and Pasadena, Calif.; and Detroit, instead of Pontiac, Mich.

But several New Jersey politicians considered the decision a slight and fired off faxes to postal and World Cup officials asking them to correct the mistake before the souvenir sets go on sale May 26.

Among those complaining about New Jersey’s treatment were Gov. Christine Whitman, Sen. Frank Lautenberg and Rep. Robert Toricelli, whose district includes Giants Stadium.

The $1.19 sets include three stamps showing soccer players kicking, trapping and heading a ball -- a 29 cent domestic stamp and international stamps worth 40 cents and 50 cents -- plus a sheet listing the 24 participating teams surrounding a U.S. map depicting the nine game sites.

Postal service spokesman Jim Van Loozen said the omission is regrettable but there isn’t enough time to reprint all the souvenir sheets by May 26. He said 60 million sets have been printed, plus another 300 million each of the 40 and 50 cent stamps and 200 million 29 cent stamps.

“It was our design and we put the cities on the list,” Van Loozen said, responding to a report that the World Cup staff was responsible for the omission. “The decision to use the major markets was ours.”

“We weren’t stupid about the venues,” Van Loozen said. “We knew where they were.”

But he noted the World Cup staff saw the map’s design in January and said nothing.

John Griffin, press officer for World Cup USA 1994 in New York, said the organization had been discussing the case with postal officials all day, but also believed it was too late to correct the problem.

“We as an organizing committee share with New Jersey its regret that the name of the Garden State was omitted from the postal service souvenir sheet,” Griffin said.