{"id":153720,"date":"2024-05-20T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-20T14:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.nli.org.il\/?p=153720"},"modified":"2025-05-07T10:28:55","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T07:28:55","slug":"moe_berg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blognli2026.moonsite.co.il\/en\/moe_berg\/","title":{"rendered":"Moe Berg: Baseball Player and Secret Agent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Moe Berg could be in Jerusalem right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then again, Berg might be in Tokyo, where he shot moving images during a visit in 1934, film he gave to the U.S. government that he figured helped American military planners fighting the Japanese in World War II. Or in Europe, where Berg spied for the U.S. Office of Strategic Services, an intelligence agency that evolved into the Central Intelligence Agency, during the war. Or at the sites of American stadiums, where he played baseball in the major leagues for 15 seasons. Or back in Manhattan, where Berg was born in 1902, earned a law degree at Columbia University and won quiz contests on national radio programs; or New Jersey, where he earned a bachelor\u2019s degree at Princeton University, lived much of his life and died in 1972.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More likely, Berg is in all of those places simultaneously, the winds having long ago exiled his ashes from Jerusalem\u2019s Mount Scopus, where his sister Ethel scattered them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the mid-1970s, Ethel Berg donated some of Moe\u2019s papers and photographs to the National Library of Israel<\/a> \u2014 or to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where the NLI was housed at the time. NLI\u2019s archives don\u2019t reveal exactly how the Bergiana ended up in its possession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s probably just as the secretive Berg would have preferred.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"
Moe Berg, who played baseball in the major leagues for 15 seasons and later became a spy for the U.S. government. Photo from the Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

An article published in 2016 by the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum quoted legendary manager Casey Stengel as hailing Berg\u2019s smooth transition early in his career from shortstop to catcher, baseball\u2019s most difficult fielding position. Stengel then added: \u201c[N]obody ever knew his life\u2019s history. I call him the mystery catcher. Strangest fellah who ever put on a uniform.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Berg may have been odd, but he excelled in the sport. Mock his .243 lifetime batting average if you wish \u2014 various versions of a popular joke at the time among fellow ballplayers held that Berg could speak multiple languages but couldn\u2019t hit a curveball in any of them \u2014 but Berg\u2019s playing tenure at baseball\u2019s highest level far exceeded the norm then or now. He played for the 1933 American League champions, the Washington Senators. Members of the Boston Red Sox in the early 1940s cited his acumen as a coach for that team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the authoritative biography of Berg, Nicholas Dawidoff\u2019s The Catcher Was a Spy<\/em><\/a>, outfielder Dom DiMaggio wondered why such an intelligent man, who was one of his coaches in Boston after Berg concluded his playing career there, worked in professional baseball.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Chair\"
One of the photos of Moe Berg donated by his sister Ethel following his death in 1972. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

In addition to Berg\u2019s playing experience \u2014 catcher is considered a thinking man\u2019s position because of its constant decision-making \u2014<\/em> consider the baseball knowledge he absorbed in conversations with just some of his teammates and managers, who included such all-time greats as Walter Johnson, Jimmie Foxx, Lefty Grove and Ted Williams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As it was, baseball\u2019s nomadic lifestyle \u2014 sports teams spend half of every season on the road \u2014 might have shaped Berg\u2019s later pursuits in espionage and his inability to put down roots.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Berg, who was Jewish, visited the Land of Israel at least once, in early 1933, during his return from a visit to Japan with other major league players. Dawidoff\u2019s book mentioned that Berg visited the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River and the Valley of Jehoshaphat outside Jerusalem\u2019s Old City, but said nothing about Berg\u2019s impressions of those places or others in the country \u2013 or of Berlin later in the trip, the day Hitler became chancellor of Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once his baseball career wound down following his stint as a coach, Berg began working for the U.S. government in 1942.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biography posits that in 1969, Berg \u2013 who implied that he was still working for the CIA at the time\u2014 \u201cprobably\u201d played a role in providing Israel with 100 military helicopters, and might have met Prime Minister Golda Meir at that point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"5a95e16f
One of the photos of Moe Berg donated by his sister Ethel following his death in 1972. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s clear is that Berg, for all of his embellishments, played a role in American espionage during a critical period in history. He was even assigned to assassinate a leading German physicist and Nobel Prize winner, Werner Heisenberg, in Zurich in December 1944 if Heisenberg indicated during a lecture there that Berlin was close to developing an atomic bomb. Heisenberg didn\u2019t, so Berg\u2019s pistol stayed in his pocket (see Heisenberg’s War<\/em><\/a> by Thomas Powers, pp. 391\u2013392).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Berg\u2019s contributions were such that in 1945 he was selected for the Medal of Freedom, an award going to Americans safeguarding the country\u2019s national security. Berg declined the award, and Ethel accepted it on her brother\u2019s behalf following his death.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"8d34390f
Moe Berg writes home from his trip to Japan with a delegation of baseball players in 1932. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

The NLI\u2019s file provides some insight into Berg\u2019s life. The main item is a 12-page letter to his family that Berg wrote on Tokyo\u2019s Imperial Hotel stationery on November 9, 1932, when he was still a ballplayer. Berg wrote about the hotel (it was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright), where his roommate was future Hall of Famer Ted Lyons; the local custom of bowing in greeting; Japanese food (\u201craw fish to dip in soy sauce (very tasty)\u201d); words (\u201cOCHA = tea\u201d); geisha shows (\u201cthe dances are more or less poses \u2014 instead of motion\u201d); hygiene (\u201cthe Japanese \u2026 bathe in extremely hot water once or twice every day\u201d); women\u2019s shoes (he drew two diagrams); kimonos; traffic control; Tokyo\u2019s Ginza (a boulevard he nicknamed \u201cthe Ginzberg\u201d); and baseball (the American players had come to run clinics for teams representing six universities).<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Letter2\"
\u201craw fish to dip in soy sauce (very tasty)\u201d – Berg elaborated on Japanese food during his trip in 1932. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Berg later that month typed short remarks he delivered in English on Radio Tokyo. \u201cI hope an innocent adventure like ours [the baseball tour] will turn out to be a scoop of diplomacy without portfolio,\u201d he wrote of his stay in Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strangely enough, he all but ignored the biggest news in his homeland: the presidential election the day before. Berg\u2019s last words before signing off were only these: \u201cheard Roosevelt won \u2014 lucky.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"Report\"
Moe Berg noted his impressions of Latin American societies and the ability of sports to bridge cultural differences. Berg was sent to the region in 1942. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

A document in the National Library\u2019s collection that Berg wrote in about 1942 apparently preceded his first undercover assignment, as a sports ambassador in Latin America under the aegis of the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs – a U.S. government agency tasked with countering Italian and German propaganda efforts in Latin America. It consists of two pages of Berg\u2019s typed notes about sports\u2019 ability to bridge cultural differences.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"B6458270
A letter from Nelson Rockefeller notifying Moe Berg that his contract with the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs wasn’t being renewed. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n
\n
\"Nelson2\"
Neslon Rockefeller thanks Berg for congratulating him on winning New York\u2019s gubernatorial election. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

On May 17, 1943, his boss at the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs sent a letter stating that Berg\u2019s contract wasn\u2019t being renewed. The boss was the agency\u2019s head, future Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. A November 26, 1958, letter signed by Rockefeller thanked Berg for congratulating Rockefeller on winning New York\u2019s gubernatorial election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Goat1
Moe Berg is seen here wearing a suit and a hat alongside two uniformed soldiers. Beside them is a shorter person, perhaps a child… and a goat. The Morris Berg Collection at the National Library of Israel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The two letters are also preserved at the National Library of Israel, as are four black-and-white photographs. One picture shows Berg wearing a suit and a hat and standing in a field with two uniformed soldiers, one of whom is smoking. Beside them is a shorter person, perhaps a child, who is holding a leash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The animal on the leash is a goat. Where the snapshot was taken, who the three people are with Berg and why a goat is in the picture \u2014 well, we just don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe Berg\u2019s CIA file can tell us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Writer-editor Hillel Kuttler can be reached at <\/em>hk@HillelTheScribeCommunications.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ivy League-trained linguist and lawyer, professional baseball player and American spy was an enigma in life \u2014 and he remains so. Somehow, a number of Berg’s documents entered the collections of the National Library of Israel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":450,"featured_media":153721,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[216],"tags":[1737,1602,5077,1716],"tags2":[2784,2774,3067,5078],"class_list":["post-153720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-diaspora","tag-american-jewry","tag-archives","tag-jews-in-sports","tag-world-war-ii"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nMoe Berg: Baseball Player and Secret Agent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The Ivy League-trained linguist and lawyer, professional baseball player and American spy was an enigma in life \u2014 and he remains so. 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