BASEBALL’S ODD MAN OUT
In the fall of 1934 Morris “Moe” Berg, a journeyman backup catcher for the Cleveland Indians baseball team, caught a break—or so it was thought. To the surprise of many people, he was named to a squad of 14 major league ballplayers preparing for a post-season tour of Japan, where he would be in the rarefied company of such superstars as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jimmy Foxx, Lefty Gomez, and legendary manager Connie Mack. It was the first time since high school that the whip-smart but light-hitting prodigy had made an all-star team.
Why Berg was picked to join the tour in the first place was never explained. A brainy academic—he graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Princeton University, went on to earn a law degree from Columbia University, and read 10 newspapers a day—Berg was an enigma to his less intellectual fellow ballplayers, a man who was seemingly more interested in international diplomacy than daily batting averages. “He could speak 12 languages,” a former teammate once joked, “but he couldn’t hit in any of them.” It was assumed that Berg’s mastery of languages would come in handy at a time when Japan was growing increasingly hostile to other countries in the region. As it turns out, the veteran baseball player was more than a talented linguist.
Did Berg use baseball as a disguise, or did he honestly enjoy playing the sport?
He was also a spy.
No one knows exactly when Berg’s baseball career collided with his shadowy spy craft, but altogether befitting a secret agent, he was an enigma to his teammates and friends. His life, then and later, was filled with unanswered questions. Did Berg use baseball as a disguise, or did he honestly enjoy playing the sport? Those who knew him best believed it was a little of both.
The youngest of three children, Berg was born in the East Harlem neighborhood of New
