The Catcher Was A Spy
Author: Nicholas Dawidoff
Release: June 28, 1994
Tagline: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg
Publisher: Pantheon
Genre: History, Biography, Non-Fiction
ISBN-10: 0679415661
ISBN-13: 978-0679415664
Synopsis: The stories about Moe Berg – his behavior, his intelligence, his charm – are legion, as are the unanswered questions posed by his life. A baseball player and a spy, he was one of the most colorful men to pursue either line of work. He played in the major leagues from 1923 through 1939 and then became a coach for the Boston Red Sox. It was not, however, as a player that Berg earned his highest accolades, but as a dugout savant (it was said that Berg, educated at Princeton, the Sorbonne, and Columbia, could speak a dozen languages but couldn’t hit in any of them).
Declassified by Agent Palmer: The Catcher Was A Spy isn’t just for Baseball and Espionage Fans
Quotes and Lines
As he grew older, Berg was quick to tout baseball’s democratic charms.
Both men were eccentrics, but Shires was a more typical baseball flake. He was uncouth, sophomoric, and hilarious. Berg, the elusive intellectual, always deflected attention and was careful never to flaunt his learning or to make an exception of himself.
“I just want to tell you he speaks seven languages,” said Povich.
“Yeah, I know,” Harris retorted,” and he can’t hit in any of them.”
“Moe was a guy with all sorts of turmoil going on inside him” was Earl Brodie’s impression.
For many World War II veterans, the war had been a disruption, and after the German and Japanese surrenders, they returned home to resume their lives. For Moe Berg, however, war had provided him with a life he loved, and returning home was the disruption.
Much of the peculiar behavior that Moe Berg exhibited toward the end of his life was a consequence of being rejected by the work that he loved, not an uncommon reaction in the intelligence world, according to Charles McCarry, the former deep cover agent for the CIA.
When Dr. Sam came upon Lord Macaulay’s bon mot “I would rather be a poor man in a garret with plenty of books than a king who did not love ready,” he copied it onto a piece of cardboard and hung it in Berg’s room.
Berg liked secret work, and he liked the secret world.
“And you must know,” he says, “that parents misgivings about their children work overtime and act on the nerves and heartstrings like the tedious, enervating and devastating monotony of an even measured, ear splitting drip of drops of water on same spot same time and same noise. Be yourself your judge and ours and do not get angry.”
Berg molded himself into a character of fantastic complication who brought pleasure and fascination to nearly everyone he brushed against during his fitful movements around the world. In the end, there are few men who find ways to live original lives. Moe Berg did that.