First Posted: 6/23/2014
Well, it’s almost time for another Fourth of July, that holiday that acknowledges that summer and all its glorious traditions, at least for a little while, has pushed all the thoughts of winter’s brutality right out of the back of our heads. It’s a time for grilling, coolers of cold ones, taking our own Nestea plunges and, for me, becoming more attuned to baseball, the game woven so tightly into the fabric of our nation’s history.
So, with the Fourth peeking just around the next corner, I’d like to tell you a tale you may not know, one from many years ago and one that involves a journeyman catcher who played in the 1920s and ’30s. And, even if you don’t like baseball but cherish the freedoms that our nation has long been afforded and the ones we’ll celebrate Friday, he’s someone you should know.
Of course, in professional baseball’s history, especially in the World War II era, there were many patriots. Back in a time when baseball was our nation’s No. 1 sport with a couple of other sports no longer nearly as popular, boxing and horse racing, nipping at its heels, many of the game’s brightest stars and future Hall of Famers dropped bats and gloves and went to enlist, from the very first pro athlete to enlist for service in WWII, Hank Greenberg, to, arguably, the best pitcher of his era, Bob Feller, to perhaps the most accomplished batsman ever, Ted Williams, among those who put their personal goals aside to fight for their country.
But, there’s another player, whose admittance into baseball’s Cooperstown’s shrine would only be guaranteed if he purchased an admittance ticket. He played in the years leading up to WWII and generated career numbers so ordinary that many may wonder how he lasted 15 years. Moe Berg in those 15 years played mostly catcher and was said to be the player who inspired a baseball scout to first coin the term “good field-no hit.” Berg managed just six homers in his entire career.
However, what Berg may have lacked in baseball prowess, he more than made up for with his love of the game, as his many teammates would attest, and also in both intellect and service to America. Berg’s academic résumé included his graduating magna cum laude from Princeton as well as furthering his studies at the prestigious Sorbonne in Paris and studying at the Columbia School of Law.
He also was a polyglot of the highest order, perhaps the best ever. In addition to his native language of English, Berg was fluent in 15 other languages. While many Americans struggle to speak their own native language very well, Berg spoke not only perfect English but also Hebrew, Yiddish, Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Sanskrit, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Arabic, Portuguese, Hungarian and Japanese.
And, when an opportunity arose to act as a spy to aid the United States in the years leading up to World War II and during the war as well, first, independently, and then for the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner to the CIA), Berg did as much, if not more, to help squelch America’s wartime enemies than any of the game’s more illustrious stars.
In 1934, many wondered how a third-string catcher could have been invited along with the likes of baseball immortals such as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to play with other All-Stars in a series of exhibition games in baseball-obsessed Japan. The answer, never known at the time, was to spy. Under the pretense of taking flowers to an American diplomat’s daughter who was being treated at St. Luke’s Hospital, at the time, the tallest building in Tokyo, Berg snuck up to the roof and filmed many key landscape features such as the harbor area, military installations and railway yards. Less than a decade later, Gen. Jimmy Doolittle studied Berg’s film intently in planning his famous raid on Tokyo.
During the war, it was Berg who parachuted into Yugoslavia to gather intelligence on Josip Tito’s forces, intelligence used by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to make sound decisions for the Allied cause. Later in that same year of 1943, the 41-year-old Berg covertly penetrated German-held Norway and, working with the underground, helped to locate a secret heavy water plant vital to the Nazi effort to develop an atomic bomb. The information laid the groundwork for the Royal Air Force’s bombing raid that destroyed the plant.
Using his code name Remus, Berg also slipped past a cadre of SS guards into an auditorium to hear German physicist Werner Heisenberg lecture to assess how close the Nazis were to developing the A-bomb. The information he gleaned was used by Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and America’s team of scientists in developing the bomb destined to bring the war to an end and save countless lives.
Berg, who it was said, had but two true loves, Dame Baseball and spying, shunned the spotlight and even refused after the war to accept America’s highest honor for a civilian in wartime, the Medal of Merit. It was an award his sister would later accept and donate to the Baseball Hall of Fame after her brother’s death in 1972.
While there are many who tend to see athletes in very narrow terms, as those who only strike at a ball or toss it or catch it and, these days, are paid millions to do it, they do have other lives.
And, in the case of a certain former catcher-turned-spy, back in a time when patriotism was seemingly a national birthright, his was a secret life that helped protect the very freedoms that we all enjoy today and ones we’ll certainly celebrate in a couple of days when, as the days have aligned this year, our holiday provides us the gateway to a glorious three-day weekend.
