Moe Berg
Morris Berg was an American professional baseball catcher and coach in Major League Baseball who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. He played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, though he was never more than an average player and was better known for being "the brainiest guy in baseball." Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball."
Berg was a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, spoke several languages, and regularly read ten newspapers a day. His reputation as an intellectual was fueled by his successful appearances as a contestant on the radio quiz show Information Please, in which he answered questions about the etymology of words and names from Greek and Latin, historical events in Europe and the Far East, and ongoing international conferences.
As a spy working for the government of the United States, Berg traveled to Yugoslavia to gather intelligence on resistance groups which the U.S. government was considering supporting. He was sent on a mission to Italy, where he interviewed various physicists concerning the German nuclear weapons program. After the war, Berg was occasionally employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, successor to the Office of Strategic Services.
Early life and education
Berg was born as Moses Berg on May 3, 1902. According to baseball records and all official documents during his lifetime, his date of birth appeared as March 2, 1902. The correct date was discovered in 2019 by filmmaker Aviva Kempner, who found his birth certificate while doing research for her movie The Spy Behind Home Plate. Berg was the third and youngest child of Bernard Berg, a pharmacist who emigrated from Ukraine, and his wife Rose, a homemaker, both Jewish, who lived in the Harlem section of New York City, a few blocks from the Polo Grounds. When Berg was three and a half, he begged his mother to let him start school.In 1906, Bernard Berg bought a pharmacy in West Newark and the family moved there. In 1910 the Berg family moved again, to the Roseville section of Newark. Roseville offered Bernard Berg everything he wanted in a neighborhood—good schools, middle-class residents, and few Jews.
Berg began playing baseball at the age of seven for the Roseville Methodist Episcopal Church baseball team under the pseudonym "Runt Wolfe". In 1918, at the age of 16, Berg graduated from Barringer High School. During his senior season, the Newark Star-Eagle selected a nine-man "dream team" for 1918 from the city's best prep and public high school baseball players, and Berg was named the team's third baseman. Barringer was the first of a series of institutions where Berg's religion made him unusual at the time. Most of the other students were East Side Italian Catholics or Protestants from the Forest Hill neighborhood. His father had wanted an environment with few Jews.
After graduating from Barringer, Berg enrolled in New York University. He spent two semesters there and also played baseball and basketball. In 1919 he transferred to Princeton University and never again referred to having attended NYU for a year, presenting himself exclusively as a Princeton man. Berg received a B.A., magna cum laude in modern languages. He studied seven languages: Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Sanskrit, studying with the philologist Harold H. Bender. His Jewish heritage and modest finances combined to keep him on the fringes of Princeton social life, where he never quite fit in.
During his freshman year, Berg played first base on an undefeated team. Beginning in his sophomore year, he was the starting shortstop. He was not a great hitter and was a slow baserunner, but he had a strong, accurate throwing arm and sound baseball instincts. In his senior season, he was captain of the team and had a.337 batting average, batting.611 against Princeton's arch-rivals, Harvard and Yale. Berg and Crossan Cooper, Princeton's second baseman, communicated plays in Latin when there was an opposing player on second base.
On June 26, 1923, Yale defeated Princeton 5–1 at Yankee Stadium to win the Big Three title. Berg had an outstanding day, getting two hits in four at bats with a single and a double, and making several marvelous plays at shortstop. Both the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Robins desired "Jewish blood" on their teams, to appeal to the large Jewish community in New York, and expressed interest in Berg. The Giants were especially interested, but they already had two shortstops, Dave "Beauty" Bancroft and Travis Jackson, who were future Hall of Famers. The Robins were a mediocre team, on which Berg would have a better chance to play. On June 27, 1923, Berg signed his first big league contract for $5,000 with the Robins.
Major league career
Early career (1923–1925)
Berg's first game with the Robins was on June 27, 1923, against the Philadelphia Phillies at the Baker Bowl. Berg came in at the start of the seventh inning, replacing Ivy Olson at shortstop, when the Robins were winning 13–4. Berg handled five chances without an error, and caught a line drive to start a game-ending double play. He got a hit in two at bats, singling up the middle against Clarence Mitchell, and scoring a run. For the season, Berg batted.187 and made 21 errors in 47 games, his only National League experience.After the season ended, Berg took his first trip abroad, sailing from New York to Paris. He settled in the Latin Quarter in an apartment that overlooked the Sorbonne, where he enrolled in 32 different classes. In Paris he developed a habit he kept for the rest of his life: reading several newspapers daily. Until Berg finished reading a paper, he considered it "alive" and refused to let anyone else touch it. When he was finished with it, he would consider the paper "dead" and anybody could read it. In January 1924, instead of returning to New York and getting into shape for the upcoming baseball season, Berg toured Italy and Switzerland.
During spring training at the Robins facility in Clearwater, Florida, manager Wilbert Robinson could see that Berg's hitting had not improved, and optioned him to the Minneapolis Millers of the American Association. Berg did not take the demotion well and threatened to quit baseball, but by mid-April he reported to the Millers. Berg did very well once he became the Millers' regular third baseman, hitting close to.330, but in July his average plummeted and he was back on the bench. On August 19, 1924, Berg was lent to the Toledo Mud Hens, a poor team ravaged by injuries. Berg was inserted into the lineup at shortstop when Rabbit Helgeth refused to pay a $10 fine for poor play and was suspended. Major league scout Mike González sent a telegram to the Dodgers evaluating Berg with the curt, but now famous, line, "Good field, no hit." Berg finished the season with a.264 average.
By April 1925, Berg was starting to show promise as a hitter with the Reading Keystones of the International League. Because of his.311 batting average and 124 runs batted in, the Chicago White Sox exercised their option with Reading, paying $6,000 for him, and moved Berg up to the big leagues the following year.
Career as a catcher (1926–1934)
The 1926 season began with Berg informing the White Sox that he would skip spring training and the first two months of the season in order to complete his first year at Columbia Law School. He did not join the White Sox until May 28. Bill Hunnefield was signed by the White Sox to take Berg's place at shortstop and was having a very good year, batting over.300. Berg played in only 41 games, batting.221.Berg returned to Columbia Law School after the season to continue studying for his law degree. Despite White Sox owner Charles Comiskey offering him more money to come to spring training, Berg declined, and informed the White Sox that he would report late for the 1927 season. Noel Dowling, a professor to whom Berg explained his situation, told Berg to take extra classes in the fall, and said that he would arrange with the dean a leave of absence from law school the following year, 1928.
Because he reported late, Berg spent the first three months of the season on the bench. In August, a series of injuries to catchers Ray Schalk, Harry McCurdy, and Buck Crouse left the White Sox in need of somebody to play the position. Schalk, the White Sox player/manager, selected Berg, who did a fine job filling in. Schalk arranged for former Philadelphia Phillies catcher Frank Bruggy to meet the team at their next game, against the New York Yankees. Bruggy was so fat that pitcher Ted Lyons refused to pitch to him. When Schalk asked Lyons whom he wanted to catch, the pitcher selected Berg.
In Berg's debut as a starting catcher, he had to worry not only about catching Lyons' knuckleball, but also about facing the Yankees' Murderers' Row lineup, which included Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Earle Combs. Lyons beat the Yankees 6–3, holding Ruth hitless. Berg made the defensive play of the game when he caught a poor throw from the outfield, spun and tagged out Joe Dugan at the plate. He caught eight more times during the final month and a half of the season.
To prepare for the 1928 season, Berg went to work at a lumber camp in New York's Adirondack Mountains three weeks before reporting to the White Sox spring training facility in Shreveport, Louisiana. The hard labor did wonders for him, and he reported to spring training on March 2, 1928, in excellent shape. By the end of the season, Berg had established himself as the starting catcher. In 1928, he led all AL catchers in caught-stealing percentage, was third in the AL in double plays by a catcher, with 8, and fifth in the American League in assists by a catcher, with 52. At the plate, he batted.246 with a career-high 16 doubles.
At law school, Berg failed Evidence and did not graduate with the class of 1929, but he passed the New York State bar exam. He repeated Evidence the following year, and on February 26, 1930, received his LL.B. On April 6, during an exhibition game against the Little Rock Travelers, his spikes caught in the soil as he tried to change direction, and he tore a knee ligament. In 1929, he was second in the American League in both double plays by a catcher and assists by a catcher, caught the third-most attempted base stealers in the league, and was fourth in the league in caught-stealing percentage. He had perhaps his best season at bat, hitting.287 with 47 RBIs.
He was back in the starting lineup on May 23, 1930, but was prevented from daily play because of his knee. He played in 20 games during the whole season and finished with a.115 batting average. During the winter, he took a job with the respected Wall Street law firm Satterlee and Canfield.
The Cleveland Indians picked him up on April 2, 1931, when Chicago put him on waivers, but he played in only 10 games, with 13 at-bats and only 1 hit for the entire season.
The Indians gave him his unconditional release in January 1932. With catchers hard to come by, Clark Griffith, owner of the Washington Senators, invited Berg to spring training in Biloxi, Mississippi. He made the team, playing in 75 games while not committing an error, and was second in the AL in double plays by a catcher, with 9, and in caught-stealing percentage, at 54.3%. When starting catcher Roy Spencer went down with an injury, Berg stepped in, throwing out 35 baserunners while batting.236.