<Archive Obituary> Moe Berg (May 29th 1972)
Bill Schenley
Photo: http://www.jafi.org.il/iq/15/moeberg.jpg
FROM: The New York Times (June 1st 1972) ~
By Staff Writers
Morris (Moe) Berg, a former major league ballplayer who was also a linguist
and scholar, died Monday in a Bellville, N.J. hospital. He was 70 years
old.
Moe Berg's scholarly credentials stood like a beacon in an era - the 20's
and 30' - when relatively few athletes had formal educations. He spoke 10
languages fluently and breezed through studies at Princeton University,
Columbia Law School and the Sorbonne.
"Moe was undoubtedly the most scholarly professional athlete I ever knew."
said John Kieran, a former sports columnist of The New York Times and a
panelist on the radio show "Information Pleases."
But when he came to bat, Berg was never able to duplicate the clout that
characterized his mental performances.
"He can speak 10 languages," his friends used to joke, "but he can't hit in
any of them."
Hit Only 6 Home Runs
In 15 years of major-league ball, most of them as a catcher, he hit only six
home runs and six triples with the Brooklyn Dodgers š, Chicago White Sox,
Cleveland Indians, Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox.
When he retired in 1939 after fives seasons with the Red Sox, his lifetime
batting average stood at .243. His busiest year was 1929, when he caught
106 games for the White Sox and batted .288.
Berg was universally appreciated by his teammates, despite the gap in their
educational achievements.
"I never knew a ballplayer who didn't like him," said Mr. Kieran. "He was
especially appreciated as a bullpen catcher, because he's always have
fascinating stories to tell."
Yet some of the most fascinating stories involving Berg didn't develop until
he left baseball to join the Office of Strategic Services as an agent during
World War II.
Before the United States entered the war, Berg was sent to hunt down
Germany's atomic energy secrets by posing as a businessman in Switzerland.
This work, for the Manhattan Project, carried over into a wartime mission in
which Berg, who spoke fluent Italian, was dropped behind the lines in Italy.
There he was to contact an Italian atomic scientist who would report on
Germany's progress on atomic weapons.
When the selection of Berg was made, the commanding general's aide
reportedly said, "Do you know what they gave us. A ballplayer named Moe
Berg. You ever hear of him?"
"Yes," the general is reported to have replied. "He's the slowest
baserunner in the American League."
Slow or not, he survived the mission and carried out his assignment.
He is survived by a brother, Dr. Samuel Berg, and a sister, Ethel, with whom
he lived in Newark.
Friends may call at Frank E. Campbell's, Madison Avenue at 81st Street,
until 8 P.M. today.
---
Photo:
http://jewishsportshalloffame.com/Hebrew/JSHF/images/Morris_Berg.jpg
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Moe Berg: Catcher And Spy
FROM: ESPN Classic ~
By Nick Acocella
"He [Moe Berg] bluffs his way up onto the roof of the hospital, the tallest
building in Tokyo at the time. And from underneath his kimono he pulls out a
movie camera. He proceeds to take a series of photos panning the whole
setting before him, which includes the harbor, the industrial sections of
Tokyo, possibly munitions factories and things like that. Then he puts the
camera back under his kimono and leaves the hospital with these films," says
Nicholas Dawidoff, a Berg biographer.
Moe Berg has long enjoyed a reputation as the most shadowy player in the
history of baseball. Earning more notoriety for being a frontline spy than
for being a backup catcher, it is difficult to separate fact from fiction in
Berg's undercover career. Just Berg being a spy begs the question: How much
of the fiction might have been used as cover?
In 1934, five years before he retired as a player, Berg made his second trip
to Japan as part of a traveling major league All-Star team. One might wonder
what the seldom-used catcher, a .251 hitter that season, was doing playing
with the likes of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig.
Berg, who spoke Japanese, took home movies of the Tokyo skyline that were
used in the planning of General Jimmy Doolittle's 1942 bombing raids on the
Japanese capital. The U.S. government wrote a letter to Berg, thanking him
for the movies. Biographies, magazine articles and word of mouth have
elevated this story into the stuff of legend.
The only utility player to be the subject of three biographies, few of his
accomplishments came in the batter's box. It was Berg whom St. Louis
Cardinals scout Mike Gonzalez was describing when he coined the phrase "good
field, no hit" in the early 1920s.
In his 15 major league seasons, in which he played just 662 games, Berg was
a lifetime .243 hitter. He started out as a slick-fielding utility infielder
before the Chicago White Sox in 1927 moved him to catcher, where he then
found his niche as a substitute backstop, filling that role until he retired
in 1939.
In only one year did the 6-foot-1, 185-pound Berg appear in more than 100
games; he played in fewer than 50 games in 12 seasons. But he was a
brilliant scholar, picking up degrees from Princeton and Columbia Law School
and studying philosophy at the Sorbonne.
His linguistic skills inspired this observation by a teammate: "He can speak
seven languages, but he can't hit in any of them."
Berg was a hit with people, though. He had a reputation for charm and
erudition that brought him introductions to powerful people, such as the
Rockefeller family, who ordinarily did not associate with ballplayers.
Morris Berg was born in a cold-water tenement on East 121st Street in
Manhattan on March 2, 1902, to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents -- Bernard,
a druggist, and Rose. The family moved across the Hudson River to Newark,
N.J., in 1906.
At seven, Berg began playing baseball for a Methodist Church team under the
pseudonym Runt Wolfe. He later starred at Barringer High School. From there,
it was on to Princeton, where he majored in modern languages and played
shortstop on the baseball team. He and a teammate, also a linguist, would
communicate on the field in Latin.
After graduating magna cum laude in 1923, Berg was signed by Brooklyn, for
whom he played shortstop and batted .186 in 49 games. After spending the
winter at the Sorbonne in Paris, he returned to the United States and played
two seasons in the minors.
A student at Columbia Law School, in 1926 he joined the White Sox, who had
bought his contract from Reading of the International League. Berg became a
catcher by accident the next season. In August 1927, after three Chicago
receivers were injured in a matter of days, he volunteered for the job.
A deft handler of pitchers and possessor of a rifle arm, by 1929 he was the
White Sox's regular catcher. He hit a career-high .288 in 106 games and
received two votes in balloting for the American League's Most Valuable
Player.
Unfortunately for Berg, the following year in spring training he suffered a
knee injury and spent the rest of his career (with the Cleveland Indians,
Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox after Chicago) as a bench warmer.
When he called it quits at 37, he had just 441 hits in 1,812 at-bats, with
only six home runs and 206 runs batted in.
After two years as a Red Sox coach, Berg left baseball on Jan. 14, 1942, the
same day his father died. Bernard Berg always regarded his son's choice of a
career as a waste of a fine intellect. Moe's love of the game - and of the
travel and social hobnobbing it afforded him -- was a matter of contention
between them to the end.
It is at this point, just after the start of the United States' entry into
World War II, that Berg's life became the subject of much speculation.
Nelson Rockefeller gave him a job with the Office of Inter-American Affairs
that allowed him to travel through South and Central America studying the
health and fitness of the population.
He parlayed that post into becoming an officer in the Office of Strategic
Services, the forerunner of the CIA, in 1943.
Berg, according to one biography, was prone to blunders: getting caught
trying to infiltrate an aircraft factory during his training, dropping his
gun into a fellow passenger's lap, and being recognized by wearing his
O.S.S.-issue watch.
Despite these mistakes, Berg was well-regarded enough to have been chosen to
carry out one of the O.S.S.' more ambitious endeavors - a plot to possibly
assassinate Werner Heisenberg, the head of Nazi Germany's atom-bomb project.
Berg, who spoke German fluently, was sent in December 1944 to Zurich to
attend a lecture by Heisenberg. Berg's assessment of the situation was that
Germany was not close to having a nuclear bomb, and there was never an
attempt to kill Heisenberg.
Another story involving Berg's spying career came at the end of the war,
when, while traveling through Soviet-occupied Czechoslovakia with some other
agents, he produced a letter with a big red star on it when asked for
credentials. The Americans lacked any authorization, and supposedly what
Berg showed the Soviet soldiers was a copy of the Texaco Oil Co. letterhead.
After being forced out of the spy business in the late forties, Berg didn't
hold a regular job. A bachelor, he often freeloaded off friends and
relatives, especially his brother Sam, who once sent Moe two eviction
notices to get him out of his house. After living with Sam for 17 years, he
moved in with his sister Ethel for the final eight years of his life.
To the end, however, Berg remained a dandy.
In 1960, out of financial necessity, he was prepared to break his lifelong
silence about his supposed exploits and agreed to write a book. However, the
project collapsed when the editor glowingly praised the prospective author's
movies on the mistaken assumption that he was about to sign a contract with
Moe of The Three Stooges.
Berg died at 70 on May 29, 1972 in Belleville, N.J., of an abdominal aortic
aneurysm. Ethel took his ashes to Israel. To this day, no one knows where
his remains are buried.
In death, as in life, Moe Berg was a mystery.
---
Photo:
http://www.thedeadballera.com/Photos/bergmo_photo4.jpg
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The Story Of Moe Berg
FROM: The Kansas City Star (March 31st 2001) ~
By Joe Posnanski
Among his many quirks, Moe Berg never wanted to look at a newspaper that had
already been read. He liked them fresh -- right off the press -- for some
reason.
Maybe that's why we chose Berg, the baseball player turned war spy, for the
life story we would recount in today's preview section.
You can have as much or as little Moe as you want.
Apparently, that was a very real choice for those who knew and played
baseball with him. Moe had a lot to offer, sometimes more than his teammates
could understand.
An odd character himself, Casey Stengel once called Berg "the strangest man
ever to play baseball."
So, read all about Moe, and here's hoping you have a fresh paper today.
1. There have been many baseball players who have served their country. The
great Bob Feller joined the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor, and he gave up
four prime seasons. "Never regretted it," he says. "I didn't want to live
under Japanese rule."
2. Ted Williams flew in both World War II and Korea. Many Negro Leagues
players fought in World War II, and it was their efforts as much as any that
led to integration in the major leagues. But when you talk baseball and war,
one story tops them all. That's the story of Moe Berg.
3. Moe Berg was probably the most intelligent man ever to play Major League
Baseball. He was certainly the strangest. Before he was done, Berg would
meet Albert Einstein and Joe DiMaggio. He would work for Nelson Rockefeller
and Walter Johnson. He would be a third-string catcher and an international
spy.
4. The first sign that Moe Berg was not your average ballplayer happened at
Princeton. There, Berg played shortstop. He had a special way of signaling
to the second baseman who would cover the bag on a steal. He spoke in Latin.
5. Berg loved two things: Languages and baseball. Well, three if you count
women. But back to language. Berg could speak, in varying degrees, 12
different languages, including Sanskrit. That led to the classic line: "Moe
Berg can speak 12 languages, and he can't hit in any of them."
6. After Berg graduated from Princeton, his father Bernard wanted him to
become a lawyer. Moe Berg wanted to become a ballplayer. In the end, he did
both. Berg reported late to Chicago his rookie season so he could finish law
school. Still, his father never forgave him for going into baseball.
7. Once Berg actually made it to the Chicago White Sox, he was scouted by
Mike Gonzalez, who sent in the all-time classic scouting report: "Good
field, no hit."
8. Moe Berg never did hit. But once he figured out that he could use his
brilliant mind to play catcher, he had a career. He played 15 seasons in the
major leagues, for five teams, all of them as a backup. "He could have been
a Supreme Court justice," the journalist, John Kieran, would say later.
9. Every baseball player gets needled differently. With Moe Berg, they
always insulted his great intelligence. Sometimes, opposing players would
taunt him by screaming, "Come on Moe, recite Leviticus for us."
10. Berg appeared on the radio quiz show "Information Please," and correctly
answered questions about impressionism, mythology, geometry and the infield
fly rule. But he refused to answer questions about law, even though he was a
lawyer. People on the radio show suspected him of being a spy.
11. Someone asked him why a man of his intelligence kept playing baseball.
His response: "I love baseball."
12. Berg was always a tough character to figure out. He would disappear and
reappear like magic. Ted Williams called Berg "Secret" or "The Mystery Man."
13. In 1939, his major-league baseball career ended. His new career began.
In time, he was contacted by the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the
predecessor of the CIA. They thought he might make a good spy.
14. His mission soon became clear: Find out just how close the Germans were
to completing the atom bomb. At the time, U.S. scientists were working
wildly and somewhat hopelessly on the bomb in what was called the Manhattan
Project. They were sure that the Germans were far, far ahead.
15. Berg was so green as a spy, that on the plane to Europe, he kept
dropping his gun. He tried to wear it in his jacket, in his belt, in his
sock, but no matter where he put it, the gun fell. After a while, he had a
friend hold the gun for him.
16. Berg was soon crisscrossing the world, bouncing from Casablanca to
Algiers, from Rome to Switzerland. He always wore a trench coat. He also
figured out how to carry a gun.
17. Berg was considered strange, but he had a remarkable knack for getting
people to talk to him. He soon had numerous scientists telling him all they
knew about German plans for an atom bomb. His knowledge of languages helped.
Along the way, he spoked at least a half dozen.
18. Here's a classic exchange between Moe Berg and Albert Einstein.
Berg: "I'll make you a deal. I'll teach you baseball and you teach me
mathematics."
Einstein: "I'm sure you'd learn mathematics faster."
19. Berg sensed after a while that the Germans were not as far along as was
commonly thought. Still, in order to find out for certain, he had to reach
German Werner Heisenberg, considered by many the greatest physicist in the
world. Berg had found a postcard written by Heisenberg, but nothing more.
20. Then came the big break. The OSS found out Heisenberg would be
delivering a lecture in Zurich. Berg went undercover, as either an Arab
businessman or French merchant -- depends who you ask. Berg's orders were
simple. Listen. Observe. If Heisenberg was getting too close, Berg was to
shoot him.
21. Berg went to the lecture. He found it difficult to keep up with all of
the technical talk, but he decided that the Germans were not close at all to
a bomb. Later, he met up with Heisenberg at a party. He decided not to shoot
him but instead to get him to come over to the Allied side.
22. In the end, Moe Berg neither shot Werner Heisenberg nor converted him.
They talked briefly and never saw each other again. But Berg had his
information. The Germans were not close to building the bomb. After the war,
Moe Berg was given the Medal of Freedom.
23. Moe Berg spent the last years of his life wandering aimlessly, from
friend's house to friend's house, living on their kindness. People always
loved being around him, to the very end, and he would tell good stories, but
he never revealed much about his life as a spy.
24. Today, in the CIA, there are just baseball cards encased in glass, each
of Moe Berg. "Because of his intellect," a sign reads, "Moe Berg is
considered the `brainiest' man ever to have played the game."
25. A final Moe Berg story: In 1992, a New York Times editor kept getting
letters from Moe Berg, each of them correcting a mistake. The editor
mentioned this to one of his co-workers, who looked shocked. "I think Berg
has been dead a long time," the co-worker said. Indeed, Moe Berg died in
1972.
---
Photo:
http://www.sportsecyclopedia.com/al/wasdc/moespy2.jpg
1933 Goudey (#158) baseball card:
http://www.vintagecardtraders.com/virtual/33goudey/33goudey-158.jpg
1940 Play Ball (#30) baseball card:
http://www.vintagecards.50megs.com/images/playball.jpg
Moe Berg in art:
http://www.pubsignshop.com/Merchant2/graphics/00000001/MD-MoeBerg.jpg
š In 1923, Brooklyn's baseball team was known as the Robbins, not the
Dodgers.
Michael O'Connor
Einstein and Joe DiMaggio. Berg read at least a dozen newspapers a
day, many of them NOT printed in English, and he couldn't read a
newspaper if somebody had already read it. He always had stacks of
newspapers and books lying all over his place, and died because he
tripped over a stack of newspapers when going to the bathroom one
night. Berg was also probably our foremost expert on Sanskrit,
understood the workings of a nuclear bomb, and as a frequent radio
guest who would answer the most trivial he was the Ken Jennings of the
1930's, but seemed to be happiest being a third string major league
catcher because of the free time it gave him to sit on the bench and
read. I would love to see somebody do a biopic of Moe Berg's life, but
somebody who is not familiar with his life would watch it and think it
was a work of fiction.
Bill Schenley
> how many languages he spoke. What I find
> interesting is that the quote "He can speak x
> languages," his friends used to joke, "but he
> number each time.
Yeah. That has always cracked me up. When Casey Stengel used that quote
about Berg ... he said 17 or 19 (can't remember). I've been reading about
Moe Berg since I was a kid ... and it's always a different number, but I
once read an interview with Berg in which *he* said "Just because I speak
six or seven different languages ..."
> Fascinating life - thanks for digging it up.
So many books about Berg ... and they're all different.
I thought this was pretty funny in the ESPN story ...