Back Then
Mr. Gorbachev, put down that ball
One of my favorite statements by a U.S. president is Ronald Reagan’s June 12, 1987, plea at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
Mikhail Gorbachev, then president of the Soviet Union, initially discounted the Reagan drama as the work of a professional actor. But within a little over two years, the Soviet president presided over the destruction of the Berlin Wall, which since 1961 had been a symbol of oppression by communist East Germany.
Gorbachev went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize and oversee the dismantling of the Soviet Union, whose flag was lowered for the last time on Christmas Day 1991. Then he retired from politics at age 60 and embarked on a world speaking tour.
That’s when I got to meet him — sort of.
I spent much of my professional life doing legal work for colleges and universities. By the 1990s, I was counsel to the University of Richmond, which was then fine-tuning its national profile by hosting important political events, such as the 1992 presidential debate among George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and H. Ross Perot.
In 1993, the university invited Gorbachev to campus to speak in the Robins Center, and he gave a very well-received speech. Two of my daughters and I had front-row court-level seats about 15 feet away from the edge of the slightly elevated stage. We had an unobstructed side view of the guest of honor.
The next day, I was told that just before walking out onto the stage, Gorbachev had met with a few university officials in an athletics office adjacent to the area of the basketball court where the stage had been set up. According to one of those in the room, Gorbachev seemed relaxed while reviewing his notes, but something on a desk caught his eye. It was a pedestal on top of which sat a baseball with about 20 ink signatures on it.
Without saying a word, Gorbachev inched toward the pedestal, picked up the ball in his left hand, reached into his shirt pocket with his right hand, pulled out his fountain pen, clamped down on the top with his lips, unscrewed the pen, and — obviously figuring all the dignitaries went through this routine — found a space large enough to carefully sign his name. He then put the ball back on the pedestal and rushed off to deliver his speech.
One of those who had been in the staging room later told me that, thinking back to the famous Ronald Reagan admonition, he said to himself, “Mr. Gorbachev, put down that ball!”
Gorbachev was a good man. He died in a Moscow hospital in 2022 at the age of 91. Before that, and to his expressed dismay, much of his work had been undone by his successors, so some of his legacy was compromised.
But Germany is free.
And Gorbachev managed to squeeze in a Pizza Hut TV commercial in Red Square and a print ad for Louis Vuitton luggage. Plus, he left behind at the University of Richmond one of the few baseballs in the history of the world ever signed by a president of the Soviet Union.