bedsitter23

An addendum to the stop at the Hoover birthplace. There is a travelling exhibit that was set up there- the Kaplan's collection "The Signature of Baseball".

Funny enough, I had run into this exhibit before, it was in Davenport when I was, though I didn't make it to it.

.It's kind of a strange collection. Unique, though in a certain context (or maybe because of a lack of context) odd.

Randy Kaplan works in governmental affairs and collects such things. Long story short, he has had the World Leaders that he has met sign baseballs for him.

When I say World Leaders, I mean he leaves no one out. Literally, all the Leaders of the Free World have provided Kaplan with signatures. When I say Leaders, I mean the leaders of the US, Germany, Israel, France and Italy for the last 25 years, the leaders of Canada and Britian for the last 40 years, and just about every President, Premier or Prime Minister you can think of.

It means Thatcher, Bush, Obama, Clinton,the Dalai Lama, Havel, Walesa, Mandela, Karzai, Gorbachev, Schevrenadze, Trudeau, and a literal list of the most important men of the last quarter centruy.

It also means that you start looking for who's left out, and oddly, given the context, the most notable missing one is the biggest baseball fan of all- the guy who wanted to pitch for the Washington Senators- Fidel Castro. Some obvious omissions as the leaders of North Korea, Putin, Mugabe, and various strong men and dictators of note.

But it is also weird in that at the end of the day, it's just a bunch of signed baseballs. 180 or so.

The Hoover exhibit (and maybe the exhibit in general) has a few other things thrown in the mix to share a history of Iowan baseball, such as a ball signed by Babe Ruth from his barnstorming days (when he visited Iowa) and a ball signed by Herbert Hoover and the Yankees of the era.

It's hard to recommend it on it's own (though I think Kaplan essentially does this as a non-profit venture, so no harm, no foul there), but certainly an interesting exhibit and worthwhile in some respects for its uniqueness.

From the KCRG website