He graduated from Princeton University, played in the MLB, and... Who is Moe Berg?

It would be truly surprising if I told you that the person who determined the course of World War II was both a spy and a professional baseball player.

Moe Berg knew this very well and built his whole life on this mystery. Even those closest to him used the phrase "He would always appear when you least expected it and then suddenly disappear" to describe him. What a coincidence that I similarly met him.

He graduated from Princeton University, played in the National Baseball League, and spied for the USA. Introducing the strange story of Moe Berg.

In March 2008, when I started writing an article by Simon Kuper on the Financial Times website, I was hoping to read an above-standard article that would touch football. Among my expectations; He speaks a dozen languages, served on behalf of the Strategic Services Office (SSO), which is considered the forerunner of the CIA, was informed that the Germans did not have nuclear weapons in World War II, and has a career of more than 15 years in the National Baseball League (MLB). There was no meeting a baseball player who was. However, I was relieved to read that this strange man, Moe Berg, had also entered Kuper's life as an unexpected visitor. I was not alone.

Morris Berg (March 2, 1902 – May 29, 1972) was an American professional baseball catcher and coach in Major League Baseball, who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. Although he played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, Berg was never more than an average player and was better known for being "the brainiest guy in baseball." Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball".

“Recently, at a used bookstore in South Carolina, I came across an old biography called Moe Berg: Athlete, Scholar, Spy. "While reading the book, I kept thinking and said 'No way' at every line."

What Kuper mentioned; It was a book called Moe Berg: Athlete, Scholar, Spy by Louis Kaufman, published in 1974. 20 years later, American author Nicholas Dawidoff also wrote a book about Berg.

“What makes Berg special; Although he was the son of an immigrant and Jewish family, he studied at Princeton, a privileged Ivy League university. “This was a rare situation under the conditions of that period.”

Berg was born in Manhattan, just as Dawidoff said, as the child of Russian Jewish couple Bernard Berg and Rose Tashker. His father, Bernard, immigrated to New York from Ukraine in 1894 and started working as an ironer in a laundry. His mother, Rose, did not arrive in the United States until two years later when Bernard had saved well and opened his laundromat. Bernard, an ambitious man, was also studying pharmacy at night school at Columbia College. When Moe was born, after siblings named Samuel and Ethel, he was already busy with pharmacy. Thanks to Bernard, who worked for 30 years to provide a good education for his children, Samuel became a doctor and Ethel became a kindergarten teacher. The family's expectation of Moe was to become a lawyer. After a winding road, Moe fulfilled his family's wish—though not quite. Moe first went to Princeton University, where, while playing on the school's baseball team, he also learned Greek, Latin, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Sanskrit as part of his modern language education.

After graduating magna cum laude in 1923, the school offered him a job as a coach, but he signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, one of the MLB teams. During the same period, he enrolled at Columbia Law School, where he received his degree in 1930. His father did not want him to be a baseball player and opposed his son, saying, "This is a waste of intelligence and experience." Berg, on the other hand, charted his path by saying, "Even if I knew I would become a Supreme Court judge, I would prefer baseball." After his first season, he went to the Sorbonne University in Paris to study philology. Berg's life stood out as a standout in the baseball world of the time.

At the time, Berg had a different profile than the man he would become a few years later. He didn't like to point out his differences. Despite all his education, he managed to adapt to the environment he was in. Occasionally, “I spent years gaining proficiency in multiple languages, and the result? “I became a catcher on a baseball team and had to make do with the sign language used on the field,” he said, but other than that, he didn't seem to complain much.

So what kind of a baseball player was Berg?

“A very intelligent, well-educated baseball player from a Jewish family, he is remembered for bringing a worldly character to the sport. He was a very promising player until he suffered a very bad knee injury. He was unable to return to his old self after the injury, being nothing more than a competent backup for the remainder of his career. There was a common joke about him: 'Moe Berg can speak a dozen different languages, but he can't hit a ball in any of them.' But I'd say he was a decent hitter before he got injured."

Although Berg started his professional baseball career as a hitter, through a chain of coincidences he found himself as a catcher. His coach asked his players who could fill that position when all their catchers were injured, and Berg volunteered. This was the move that extended his baseball career, even though it was barren due to injuries. Because, as his friends with whom he played together stated; Although he was a passable catcher, he was a terrible hitter.

Berg did not deny this, but he did not hesitate to defend himself with a statement he made shortly before his death, which you can still find on the CIA's website today. “Unlike many of my friends with whom I played baseball, I may not have been selected for the Hall of Fame. But I am happy; I both made a professional career in this game and served my country with the equipment I have. It is true; "I could never hit balls like Babe Ruth, but at least I know I can speak more languages than him."

The expression 'service to the country' brings us to Berg's other area of expertise at this point; In other words, it leads to espionage. Even on the CIA's website, Berg is mentioned as follows:

“Berg, who can be considered a true Renaissance man, is not only a professional baseball player, but also an intelligence officer who served his country.”

“What kind of services?” To answer the question, it is necessary to return to Berg's first known mission. In 1934, the MLB All-Star team went to Tokyo for a tour in Japan. Moe Berg is also in the cast, along with legends such as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. No one can figure out what an ordinary catcher is doing in the same team with these names, but the issue is not emphasized much. However, Berg's intention is different.

"Berg went to St Luke's Hospital in Tokyo with a bouquet in his hand and said that he wanted to visit Cecil Burton, the daughter of US ambassador Joseph Grew, who had given birth. Berg, who introduces himself as a friend of the Burtons, instead of going to the room after entering, goes to the roof of the hospital, which was once the tallest building in Tokyo. She has a camera hidden under her kimono. From right to left; It records all of Tokyo, from the port to industrial areas, from possible munitions factories to other remarkable details. Then he hides his camera in his kimono again and leaves.”

The Tokyo images Berg recorded during that trip would serve as a kind of map during the US air raid led by General Jimmy Doolittle in 1942. The US Government sends Berg a letter thanking him for the images. However, according to Dawidoff, this is not a 'taken' duty. Berg did this himself and handed over the footage to the SSO upon his return to the country.

Tall, dark-skinned, handsome, and a great dancer, Berg also distinguished himself at the diplomatic receptions he attended in Japan and added his Japanese conversation with Emperor Hirohito to his contacts.

Berg, who worked as a coach for the Boston Red Sox after ending his playing career, completely retired from sports two years later. In the same period, his life evolved in a different direction with the USA entering the Second World War. No one knows that aspect with all its truth, but the rumors continue - even today.

According to a rumor, Berg, who started working in the American Ministry of Internal Affairs with the advice of the Rockefeller Family immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, was sent to South and Central American countries to observe the political, economic, and welfare situations of the societies. In 1943, he left his job at the Ministry of Internal Affairs and joined the SSO.

In his first assignment in this institution, he parachuted into Yugoslavia to observe rebel groups. Here, he meets with Draza Mihajlovic, the head of the Chetniks loyal to King Peter, and Josip Broz Tito, the head of the communist partisans. Following Berg's report that Tito's forces are more dominant, the name to be supported is decided and the greatest aid is sent to Tito.

Berg's most speculated work was created in 1944. According to the information on the CIA's website, Berg, who introduced himself as a German businessman living in Switzerland, managed to infiltrate a speech made in Switzerland by Werner Heisenberg, the head of the Nazi atomic bomb project. Unable to bear the sight of blood, Berg's mission is to kill Heisenberg if he detects any sign that the Germans are close to producing an atomic bomb. He even carries cyanide with him so that he can end his own life without being captured after completing his mission. However, what they heard proves that such a possibility is out of the question. At the end of the speech, Berg conveyed the information he obtained to the SSO, and according to some, this information was what changed the Second World War.

According to Dawidoff, this story contains various gaps. First of all, it is unlikely that Heisenberg would explain clearly the final point the Germans had reached in the atomic bomb project in front of a hall half full of foreigners. However, despite everything, Berg's role at this point is not insignificant.

“A meeting held in Zurich during the Second World War provides us with a beautiful story about the nature of physicists and the army. According to many historians, that day created an important war hero; That person is Heisenberg, the German scientist who actively sabotaged the engineering project to create a weapon of mass destruction for Hitler. Berg's role at this point can be described as comic, but we still cannot deny that he is somewhere around the events at the critical stages, if not in the very heart of the events.”

“Since he was intelligent, fluent in foreign languages, outgoing, lonely, and extremely loyal, he was perfect for the intelligence job. He was a character desperately waiting for his actions to be appreciated. This allowed him to get close to the Secret Service. However, he has difficulty in fulfilling the requirements of this rapprochement; He was portraying the profile of a person who was trying hard to show that he was busy with secret and mysterious operations that he could not explain. However, in reality, 'good' spies do not attract attention in this way. When the CIA, which is already a continuation of the SSO, rejects it, we see that these contradictions reach their peak.

He was a man who loved his job and duty. An outcast and loner by nature, he was involved in institutions with deep American roots; Such as Princeton, MLB, and SSO... The fact that he appeared in such visible worlds and always wanted to be known as a different person and attract attention was vital to understanding his character. He is primarily an intellectual and a spy while playing baseball; "When he was in the intelligence business, he was trying to emphasize that he was a famous and brilliant athlete."

Berg was a strange character in every way. For example, he rejected the US Medal of Merit after the war. The reason was quite strange; Berg was asked to never reveal for which services he was deemed worthy of the medal, and he turned down the offer, saying, "What does it matter if I can't tell anyone about it?"

Yes, he was a man who sought attention throughout his life. He was also a good storyteller. According to one of those stories, one day he met Albert Einstein, and after a few hours they spent together, Einstein said: “Mr. Berg, teach me baseball and I will explain the theory of relativity to you. Or never mind; "Anyway, you can figure out the theory of relativity in less time than it took me to learn baseball."

In summary, Berg; was a mortal who described the person he wanted to be, not the person he was. With this feature, it was as if he had established the Westworld universe within himself, in which the character Robert Ford, played by Anthony Hopkins, showed people the person within themselves and the person they wanted to be. He was half crazy, half schizophrenic. However, it was certain that it had a good impact on people. A journalist said of him, “He was a warm person, he made people feel good. "When he spent time with you, you would find yourself inundated with praise." According to Casey Stengel, with whom he played, he was "the most mysterious man to ever play baseball." He was also 'the most knowledgeable athlete' that NY Times writer John Kieran knew.

His brother Samuel said that Moe changed a lot after the war and that he turned into a 'lost soul' after he left the Secret Service. He was now a man who had lost his direction. He spent his life reading books and watching the matches of the New York Mets, of which he was a fan. He had difficulty finding a new job. Berg, whose relations with his close circle gradually deteriorated, was kicked out of the house by his brother Samuel, with whom he lived for 17 years, and he moved in with his sister Ethel and spent the remaining eight years of his life there.

The ashes of Berg, who died on May 29, 1972, were taken to Israel by his sister Ethel, but until now, no one could find out where Berg's remains were buried or the location of his grave. Thus, he managed to leave a veil of mystery behind even his death. In a sense, he was the first version of the main character in Patricia Highsmith's 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley.

With all his sins and virtues.

--------------------------------

This baseball player was secretly trained as a government assassin
https://nypost.com/2018/06/16/this-baseball-player-was-secretly-trained-as-a-cia-assassin/