Randy Kaplan is on a quest to bring the world together — through his collection of basketballs signed by heads of state and world leaders. 'My mantra and my motto is 'diplomacy through baseball.' ' OnlyAGameNPR
Randy Kaplan spends 20 to 30 hours a week researching world leaders and prospective world leaders. Here he holds autographed baseball bats signed by former President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
"Very, very hard to infiltrate that inner circle," Randy says."I tried every mechanism which I know, and I don't take no for an answer. So it's very difficult for me to come to terms with, 'It's not going to happen.'" So, Randy still didn’t have a baseball signed by the pope. But he wasn’t about to give up. With help from a friend, who happened to be a cardinal, he sent a couple more baseballs to the pope’s personal secretary. But he wasn’t optimistic.
When Randy was in high school, he snuck backstage at rock concerts, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of his idols. And, because he was close to Manhattan, Randy met lots and lots of famous people.In April of 1993, things started to get decidedly crazier. Randy was on a business trip to Houston, and he decided to go to an Astros game. The woman sitting next to him mentioned that former President George Herbert Walker Bush and his wife, Barbara, came to games whenever they were in town.
"And I said to myself, 'Oh, my god. What an amazing idea it would be to have presidents and world leaders sign baseballs and start a collection and share it with the world,'" Randy recalls. "So I knew I had to get to the book signing early," Randy says."I also knew I needed a trick up my sleeve, because security was gonna be extremely tight."
"And this way we can get the world to come together and hopefully be a better place," Randy says."'We have different ideology, but we share the same biology.'"But make no mistake: Randy Kaplan cares deeply about who wins major elections, in the U.S. and around the world.
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