SportsCentury - Moe Berg (Catcher/Scholar/Spy)

Morris "Moe" Berg (March 2, 1902 – May 29, 1972), was an American 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, usually used as a backup catcher, and was better known for being "the brainiest guy in baseball" than for anything he accomplished in the game. Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball."

A graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, Berg spoke several languages and regularly read 10 newspapers a day. His reputation was fueled by his successful appearances as a contestant on the radio quiz show Information, Please in which he answered questions about the derivation of words and names from Greek and Latin, historical events in Europe and the Far East, and ongoing international conferences.

As a spy working for the government of the United States, Berg traveled to Yugoslavia to gather intelligence on resistance groups the U.S. government was considering supporting. He was then sent on a mission to Italy, where he interviewed various physicists concerning the German nuclear program. After the war, Berg was occasionally employed by the OSS's successor, the Central Intelligence Agency, but, by the mid-1950s, was unemployed. He spent the last two decades of his life without work, living with various siblings.

In 1946, former Chicago White Sox teammate Ted Lyons was the new manager of the White Sox, and offered Berg a coaching position. Berg declined. Boston Red Sox owner Thomas Yawkey, who was much closer to Berg when he played for Red Sox, matched Lyons' offer, but Berg still turned them down. Berg did not apply for a teaching position, or join a law firm.

In 1951, Berg begged the CIA to send him to Israel. "A Jew must do this", he wrote in his notebook. The CIA rejected Berg's request. Still, in 1952 Berg was hired by the CIA to use his old contacts from World War II to gather information about the Soviet atomic science. For the $10,000 plus expenses that Berg received, the CIA received nothing in return. The CIA officer who spoke with Berg when he returned from Europe said that he was "flaky." Berg continued to serve his assignment for the CIA until 1954, when his contract expired. The CIA chose not to renew it. Berg tried again to serve the CIA and the CIA again declined.

For the next 20 years, Berg had no real job, living off friends and relatives who put up with him because of his charisma. When they would ask what he did for a living, he would reply by putting his finger to his lips, giving them the impression that he was still a spy. A lifelong bachelor, he lived with his brother Samuel for 17 years. According to Samuel, he became moody and snappish after the war and did not seem to care for much in life besides his books. His brother finally grew fed up with the arrangement and asked Moe to leave and even had eviction papers drawn up. After being evicted from his brother's home, Berg moved in with his sister Ethel in Belleville, New Jersey, where he remained for the rest of his life.

He received a handful of votes in Baseball Hall of Fame voting (four in 1958, and five in 1960). When he was criticized for "wasting" his intellectual talent on the sport he loved, Berg replied, "I'd rather be a ballplayer than a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court".

Berg received many requests to write his memoirs, but turned them down; he almost wrote them in 1960, but he quit after the co-writer assigned to him confused him with Moe Howard of the Three Stooges.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moe_Berg

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