Moe Mountain

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Moe Mountain
Moe Berg baseball card (1933)
Moe Berg baseball card (1933)
Catcher
Born: March 2, 1902
New York City , United StatesUnited StatesUnited States 
Died on: May 29, 1972
Belleville , United StatesUnited StatesUnited States 
Suggested: Right Threw: Right
Debut in Major League Baseball
June 27,  1923  with the  Brooklyn Robins
Last MLB assignment
September 1,  1939  with the  Boston Red Sox
MLB statistics
(until end of career)
Batting average    .243
Hits    441
RBI    206
Teams

Morris "Moe" Berg (born March 2, 1902 in New York City , New York , † May 29, 1972 in Belleville , New Jersey ) was an American baseball player and spy for the American Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War . Even if he played for different teams in the American League for over 15 years , he was always considered to be at most a mediocre player who was mostly used as a substitute. Due to his education and his curriculum vitae, Berg is, depending on your point of view, “the smartest guy in baseball” or “the strangest man who has ever played baseball”.

Life

Berg was the third child of the pharmacist Bernhard Berg and the housewife Rose, née Tashker. He grew up first in Harlem , then later in Newark (New Jersey). Berg began playing on a Methodist baseball team at the age of seven . After graduating from high school in 1918, he went to New York University , where he played basketball in addition to baseball . There, too, as at the Catholic Barringer High School before, he was an outsider because of his Jewish faith. After only two semesters, Berg moved to Princeton University , where he received his bachelor's degree with magna cum laude . He had studied modern languages and spoke Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Sanskrit . Coming from a financially constrained Jew, he had few social ties at Princeton University.

Berg also played baseball at the university, initially as a first baseman and later as a shortstop . He was just an average batsman and moderate baserunner, but had a strong throwing arm and above all an understanding of the game. He became captain of the team that fought against Harvard and Yale for the Big Three title (Harvard, Yale and Princeton) in 1923 . In the last game of this series against Yale, both the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Robins became aware of Berg, both of which had large following among the Jewish population. On June 27, 1923, he signed a $ 5,000 contract with the Brooklyn Robins, where he was one of the few players of Jewish origin.

Baseball career

Berg played one season for the Brooklyn Robins from 1923, but without leaving an overly good impression. He then traveled to Paris , where he lived in the Latin Quarter and took courses at the Sorbonne . It was at this time that he also developed a habit of reading several newspapers in full every day, which he would keep throughout his life. Following his studies in Paris, Berg did not return to the USA in January 1924 to prepare for the coming season, but instead went to Switzerland and Italy . As a result, Berg only performed mediocre in training, so that the manager of his team, Wilbert Robinson , sent him to the Minneapolis Millers farm team in the minor league , which he accepted only reluctantly.

After a number of missions and the now famous telegram lines from the agent Mike Gonzalez "Good field, no hit" ("Good fielding, no hits") Berg was signed in April 1925 by the Chicago White Sox , for which he initially as an infielder (Third Baseman, Shortstop) and then played as a catcher until January 1932. During this time he competed against baseball legends like Babe Ruth , Lou Gehrig and Earle Combs . In parallel, he studied at the Columbia University Law , which meant that he repeatedly missed the training and the start of the season his team. At the same time, his studies also suffered from his career as a professional baseball player, so that he failed important exams and was only admitted to the bar in 1929 and graduated as a Bachelor of Laws a year later . In April of the same year, Berg seriously injured his knee in a game. Even if he was back in the team's starting line-up a month later, he couldn't play as consistently as a professional player could have expected, and he was given to the Cleveland Indians . This released him in January 1932, whereupon Berg started as a catcher for the Washington Senators in 75 games.

In 1932, Berg was selected with three other players to teach baseball in Japan. However, he did not return to the USA immediately, but instead traveled to Manchuria , Shanghai and Beijing , and via Indochina , Siam , India and Egypt to Berlin . After playing another season for the Indians in 1933, he was picked up again at the last minute for an all-star team's trip to Japan with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Earl Averill , Charlie Gehringer , Jimmie Foxx and Lefty Gomez , among others selected. On this trip he made film recordings of Tokyo for the MovietoneNews newsreel , when he set himself apart from the other players under a pretext.

Upon his return, he was released in Cleveland and signed by the Boston Red Sox for the 1935 season , but played only about thirty games per season for five years. In 1940 and 1941 Berg took over the Red Sox as a coach.

After the sport

With the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States entered World War II. Berg initially worked on Operation Doolittle Raid with the help of the Tokyo Bay films he shot in Japan in 1933 , before going to South America for a few months in August 1942, where he acted as a health and sports advisor to the American troops stationed there.

In August 1943, Berg began working for the Office of Strategic Services , a forerunner of the CIA . As an agent, he was behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia by parachute dropped to the strength of the local resistance movement to evaluate. His evaluations, among other things, influenced the type and volume of aid deliveries that were made to the various groups. In the second half of 1943 Berg traveled through Europe to obtain information on the status of the German nuclear program. He should also persuade scientists in talks to collaborate and emigrate to the United States. This section reached a dramatic climax in December 1943, when he was supposed to attend a lecture by Werner Heisenberg in Zurich to find out the status of the German nuclear program and Heisenberg's role in it. In the event that he came to the conclusion that the Germans were about to complete the bombing, Berg had orders to shoot Heisenberg on the spot. However, Berg saw no immediate need and decided not to kill Heisenberg.

Berg left Europe on April 25, 1945 and returned to his homeland.

After the Second World War

The role Berg had played in the evaluation of the German nuclear program piqued the interest of the CIA in 1952, which commissioned him to use his old contacts to assess the state of the Soviet missile program. However, his efforts did not produce any tangible results, which led a CIA employee to classify Berg as "dubious" or "superficial" .

For the next twenty years, Berg no longer had a regular job and lived at the expense of friends and relatives, probably trying to give the impression that he was still working as a spy. A moody loner who was only interested in his books, Berg lived with his sister until he died in 1972 at the age of 70.

Web links

Wikiquote: Moe Berg  - Quotes

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nicholas Dawidoff: The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg . Vintage, ISBN 0-679-76289-2 , pp. 17 .
  2. ↑ Ralph Berger: Moe Berg. In: The Baseball Biography Project. The Society for American Baseball Research, accessed October 27, 2008 : "the strangest man ever to play baseball"
  3. ↑ Nicholas Dawidoff: The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg . Vintage, ISBN 0-679-76289-2 , pp. 46 .
  4. ↑ Nicholas Dawidoff: The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg . Vintage, ISBN 0-679-76289-2 , pp. 52-55 .
  5. ↑ Nicholas Dawidoff: The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg . Vintage, ISBN 0-679-76289-2 , pp. 241-245 .
  6. ↑ Nicholas Dawidoff: The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg . Vintage, ISBN 0-679-76289-2 , pp. 248 .
personal data
SURNAME Berg, Moe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Berg, Morris (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American baseball player and spy
DATE OF BIRTH March 2, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City , New York
DATE OF DEATH May 29, 1972
Place of death Belleville , New Jersey