When most people think of baseball legends, they picture Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, not a Princeton-educated catcher who dabbled in espionage.
But Moe Berg was no ordinary ballplayer - he was a man of mystery, a linguist, and a wartime spy whose life reads like a Hollywood script. As America gears up for another Super Bowl, the ultimate showcase of athleticism and strategy, it's worth considering the unexpected intersections of sports and subterfuge.
Just as the best football teams rely on intelligence, deception, and split-second decision-making, so too did Berg in his covert missions during World War II.
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 five major-league teams from 1923 to 1939, he was a very mediocre ballplayer. But Moe 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
The answer was simple: Moe Berg was a United States spy, working undercover with the CIA. Moe spoke 15 languages - including Japanese. And he 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................
Moe Berg
Moe Berg’s recruitment into the world of espionage was a mix of timing, talent, and the unique skill set he brought to the table. His background as a highly educated, multilingual baseball player with a knack for blending in made him a prime candidate for intelligence work.
During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Berg had already built a reputation as an intellectual athlete, having studied at Princeton and Columbia Law School while mastering several languages, including German, French, Italian, Spanish, and Japanese. His first brush with espionage came in 1934 when, as part of an All-Star baseball tour in Japan when he went to the hospital to see the daughter of an American diplomat.....
By the way, he never delivered the flowers. The ball-player ascended to the hospital roof and filmed key features: the harbour, military installations, railway yards,etc. Eight years later, General Jimmy Doolittle studied Berg's films in planning his spectacular raid on Tokyo.
As World War II escalated, Berg's knowledge of languages and European geography caught the attention of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA. In 1943, he was officially recruited into the OSS by Nelson Rockefeller, who was overseeing intelligence operations in Latin America. Berg’s first assignment was to assess political and military conditions in neutral countries, particularly in occupied Europe.
Tito's partisans
During World War II, Moe 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 that plant.
The R.A.F. destroys the Norwegian heavy water plant targeted by Moe Berg.
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 guard and sat in 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 back to his hotel.
Werner Heisenberg
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 Germany's 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 - America's highest honour for a civilian in wartime.
But Berg refused to accept it, because he couldn't tell people about his exploits. After his death, his sister accepted the medal. It now hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown.
Presidential Medal of Freedom: the highest award given to civilians during wartime.
Moe Berg's baseball card is the only card on display
at the CIA Headquarters in Washington, DC.
Some Americans will never appreciate America until after they have helped destroy it and have then begun to suffer the consequences.
~ Thomas Sowell ~
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