WWII story....Patton & St Louis pitcher Dickson..what's yours ?

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Posted By: Gil

Im going to totally adlib this one and I have no pictures, but you can feel free to add some if you like. I shared this adventure with Alan, the collector who touts himself as the "poor Jewish slob" and other derrogatory and probably inaccurate adjectval descriptors.

One day I wanted to check out how much a spy Moe Berg really was, so (thanks to Al Gore) I checked the internet and found that he was actually rather aggressive and accomplished in that. And further, one article stated that the CIA headquarters had his baseball card on display.

Well, I was collecting (non-sports) spy cards at that time, and the possibility of adding a baseball card to this grouping struck me just right. I don't know why I decided that Alan was the individual to contact in order to determine exactly which card the CIA had on display, but I got lucky. Alan was one of the best people I could have contacted in this country for this information. You see? I determined that if a specific card was right for the CIA to display, well then it was good enough for my collection!

As it turned out Alan knew the curator (or at least her e-mail address) of the display which included the Berg cards - there were two. After exchanging e-mails with her it became apparent that the cards were her property, not that of the Government. And they were "on loan" for that presentation, which no longer exists, since she has retired.

One thing she was doing is that she has an active on line effort selling t-shirts and other shirts portraying this card on the shirt. Of course, I attempted to make her an offer for the exact card which she had on display. For some reason only the green Goudey came to light. The other Moe Berg card which she had was never brought out. She was not interested in parting with her card, and I did not proceed to press the issue with a significantly attractive offer. I don't think that either of us wanted that to happen.

So there it is. Well that plus when I contacted Alan to describe this adventure, I gave him a link to her t-shirt site and told him that we should select each a shirt to comemmorate this most excellent adventure! He never followed up + I now owe him an e-mail. Maybe I was not clear, or maybe he is too mature for a Moe Berg shirt.