The Moe Berg Story

[70ToppsFanatic]

This was shared with me by a friend via email. It had a slew of pictures in it (including a Goudey Berg Card and many others).

I copied it from the email and pasted it here. Unfortunately it lost all the pictures. It's a story well worth knowing about an mediocre ballplayer
who performed an incredible number of courageous and significant services for his country.

Anyone who wants the original with the pictures please send me a PM with your email address and I will be happy to forward it to you.

Enjoy.



The Moe Berg Story

When baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went on tour in baseball-crazy Japan in 1934, some fans wondered why a third-string catcher named Moe Berg was included. Although he played with 5 major league teams from 1923 to 1939, he was a very mediocre ball player, but was regarded as the brainiest ballplayer of all time. In fact Casey Stengel once said: "That is the strangest man ever to play baseball." When all the baseball stars went to Japan, Moe Berg went with them, and many people wondered why he went with the team

Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth - Picture Goes Here


The answer was simple: Moe Berg was a United States spy working undercover with the OSS forerunner to the CIA . Moe spoke 15 languages, including Japanese - Moe Berg had two loves: baseball and spying. In Tokyo, garbed in a kimono, Berg took flowers to the daughter of an American diplomat being treated in St. Luke's Hospital - the tallest building in the Japanese capital. He never delivered the flowers. The ball-player ascended to the hospital roof and filmed key features: the harbor, military installations, railway yards, etc. Eight years later, General Jimmy Doolittle studied Berg's films in planning his spectacular raid on Tokyo..

Catcher Moe Berg - Picture Goes Here


Berg's father, Bernard Berg, a pharmacist in Newark, New Jersey, taught his son Hebrew and Yiddish. Moe, against his wishes, began playing baseball on the street aged four. His father disapproved and never once watched his son play. In Barringer High School, Moe learned Latin, Greek and French. Moe read at least 10 newspapers every day. He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton - having added Spanish, Italian, German and Sanskrit to his linguistic quiver. During further studies at the Sorbonne, in Paris, and Columbia Law School, he picked up Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Arabic, Portuguese and Hungarian - 15 languages in all, plus some regional dialects.
While playing baseball for Princeton University, Moe Berg would describe plays in Latin or Sanskrit.

Tito's partisans - Picture Goes Here


During World War II, he was parachuted into Yugoslavia to assess the value to the war effort of the two groups of partisans there. He reported back that Marshall Tito's forces were widely supported by the people and Winston Churchill ordered all-out support for the Yugoslav underground fighter, rather than Mihajlovic's Serbians. The parachute jump at age 41 undoubtedly was a challenge. But there was more to come in that same year. Berg penetrated German-held Norway, met with members of the underground and located a secret heavy water plant - part of the Nazis' effort to build an atomic bomb. His information guided the Royal Air Force in a bombing raid to destroy the plant.

The R.A.F. destroys the Norwegian heavy water plant targeted by Moe Berg. - Picture Goes Here


There still remained the question of how far had the Nazis progressed in the race to build the first Atomic bomb. If the Nazis were successful, they would win the war. Berg (under the code name "Remus") was sent to Switzerland to hear leading German physicist Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Laureate, lecture and determine if the Nazis were close to building an A-bomb. Moe managed to slip past the SS guards at the auditorium, posing as a Swiss graduate student. The spy carried in his pocket a pistol and a cyanide pill. If the German indicated the Nazis were close to building a weapon, Berg was to shoot him - and then swallow the cyanide pill. Moe, sitting in the front row, determined that the Germans were nowhere near their goal, so he complimented Heisenberg on his speech and walked him back to his hotel.

Werner Heisenberg - he blocked the Nazis from acquiring an atomic bomb. - Picture Goes Here


Moe Berg's report was distributed to Britain's Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key figures in the team developing the Atomic Bomb. Roosevelt responded: "Give my regards to the catcher." Most of Germanys leading physicists had been Jewish and had fled the Nazis mainly to Britain and the United States . After the war, Moe Berg was awarded the Medal of Freedom Americas highest honor for a civilian in wartime. But Berg refused to accept, as he couldn't tell people about his exploits. After his death, his sister accepted the Medal and it hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown ,


Moe Bergs baseball card is the only card on display at the CIA Headquarters in Washington DC - Picture Goes Here (Goudey Card)

March 2,1902-----May 29, 1972



Presidential Medal of Freedom (the highest award to be awarded to civilians during wartime) - Picture Goes Here

[HotSpringsBaseball]

Wonderful story! Fascinating history and very well written. Thanks for sharing!

[frankbmd]

The Catcher Was A Spy

is the definitive biography of Moe, who was brilliant yet led a very strange life on and off the diamond and during the war. I don't doubt that his accomplishments undercover during the war were significant, but he was far from the typical spy, or the typical third string catcher with a 15 year major league career if there is such a thing.



If you want to learn more about this strange, eccentric fellow, read the book

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0679762892/...l_1yasp205hn_p

[OldEnglishD]

Neato! Thanks for sharing!

[ErikV]

I'll have to look around for the source, but I recall reading that during his
playing days, Berg refused to allow anyone to touch any of his daily newspapers.
If touched, he would throw them out and have another copy of the newspaper
ordered.

I also seem to recall reading that in his final years he lived with a sister and died
broke.

ErikV

[pbspelly]

Some previous posts on Moe
http://www.net54baseball.com/showthr...=200372&page=3

[jerseygary]

I had to put Moe and some of his stories in the "Odd Balls" chapter of my book. He did indeed read as many as a dozen newspapers a day, any cities or countries he could get his hands on. He wouldn't let anyone else touch them until he had read them himself - he considered the paper "live" and when he finish the paper was "dead" and anyone was free to take it. My favorite story about Berg is as he lay dying in an New jersey hospital bed, his last words were "how did the Mets do today?"

[mattsey9]

"He could speak seven languages, but he couldn't hit in any of them."

[dabigyankeeman]

A brilliant man and a great patriot. I have a couple of his old cards in my Jewish collection.

[MikeGarcia]

...under the radar , the perfect intelligence agent.

[Exhibitman]

The book is really well done. My favorite aspect of the Moe Berg story is that he had the education and brains to step right into what could have been a successful and much more lucrative job as a lawyer but he chose to be a bullpen catcher instead, because, as his death bed words showed, the man genuinely loved baseball. Anyhow, here is one of my favorite items, a snapshot of Berg with another American icon:

[Big Ben]

image.jpg
I posted this in the May thread. This is going to get matted and framed for my den!

[btcarfagno]

Hey Ben...that looks familiar!! Best Berg autograph I have ever owned. Though this one is a close second...



That's Moe 8th from the top. 1941 Red Sox bat.

Tom C

[Big Ben]

Originally Posted by btcarfagno

Hey Ben...that looks familiar!! Best Berg autograph I have ever owned. Though this one is a close second...



That's Moe 8th from the top. 1941 Red Sox bat.

Tom C

Yep. That was a great transaction Tom!!!
The 1941 bat is awesome!!!!