The man, the myth, the legend … Moe Berg
It was a Sunday — a late spring day in 1971 — and the Yankees were getting ready to play a doubleheader against the Washington Senators. I was a rookie reporter at the big league level and was still getting used to the sights and sounds of major league baseball from a journalist’s perspective. That morning I heard a heard a new sound — one that definitely excited me.
There was a group of men behind me and some were being introduced to others. I heard someone say “This is Moe Berg.” MOE BERG!
I knew the name. Not because Moe Berg had spent 15 years in the major leagues — most of them as a backup catcher. Not because Moe Berg had been a star infielder at Princeton University before becoming a professional. None of that.
I knew the name because I had heard about Moe Berg’s brilliance on a radio program called “Information Please.” I’d heard all about it from my father. Many times.
Information Please was a popular NBC program in the days when network radio dominated the American entertainment scene. Listeners were encouraged to submit questions and there was a monetary prize for anyone who could stump the fourperson panel of scholars. Three of the panelists were permanent. The fourth was always a guest.
Guests included such luminaries as Orson Welles, Clare Boothe Luce, Leonard Bernstein and Basil Rathbone. Since my father was a regular listener to the program, he probably heard all or most of these people, but I don’t know that for sure. I do know that I never heard him mention any of them.
The one he always talked about was the brilliant catcher who seemed to have mastered every subject under the sun.
Now I was in the same room with Moe Berg.
I couldn’t help myself. I turned and looked. To my great surprise, I saw a familiar face. I saw a man who had approached me a few days earlier in the Shea Stadium press box. He had interrupted me when I had sought to introduce myself, saying, “I know, I know.” We’d had a short conversation and then he’d walked away without him ever telling me who he was.
Now I knew. I had already met Moe Berg. I just hadn’t known it.
As it happened, I was about to get to know him much better. When I entered the press box a short time later, I discovered him already seated in the chair next to mine. He greeted me as though we were old pals. It was one ballgame I’ll never forget.
The Senators were managed by Hall of Famer Ted Williams, who had been Berg’s Red Sox teammate in 1939. Early in the game Washington slugger Frank Howard struck out chasing a pitch out of the strike zone.
“He’s going to hear about that from Ted Williams,” Berg said. “Ted would never have swung at that pitch, but he doesn’t understand that most people don’t have his eyesight. He could see that wasn’t a strike but to Frank Howard that looked like a good pitch.”
The Red Sox had been Berg’s last team and he told me he was especially proud of the relationship he had with Hall of Fame pitcher Lefty Grove, who was functionally illiterate and very self-conscious of that fact. He remained aloof from most of his teammates but Berg was the exception. He was the only member of the Red Sox who was ever invited into Grove’s home.
He told me about a conversation he had with Princeton-based physicist Albert Einstein. Imitating Einstein’s Swedish accent he said Einstein had proposed that “You teach me baseball and I teach you relativity. No, never mind. You learn relativity before I learn baseball.”
Then he added something that I found absolutely astounding.
“Ty Cobb,” he said, referring to a Hall of Fame outfielder, “was just as much a genius as Albert Einstein.”
Berg was uniquely qualified to make that judgment. He was probably the only person on earth who knew them both.
I mentioned his participation in “Information Please” and he told me that a few days later Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis had congratulated him. “He said I’d done more for the image of baseball in 30 minutes than he’d done in almost 20 years as commissioner.”
I asked him that day if he’d been involved in military intelligence during World War II. He acknowledged that he had but admonished me not to tell no one else.
When the first game ended, he said goodbye. “I hated doubleheaders as a player,” he explained, “and I’m not going to sit through one as a spectator.”
From that day on we were good friends — on his terms. He had to have my telephone number, but I could not have his. He had to know all about me, but he was very guarded with information about himself.
Besides baseball, I covered Princeton football that fall, and he never missed a home game. Afterwards, he always asked me for a ride back to the Trenton train station. He asked for lifts other times, too. Following the 1971 World Series I drove him from Baltimore back to Trenton.
He told me plenty of anecdotes about his baseball career and about the war but — again — always on his terms. I could see that he had the perfect mentality to be an effective spy. Moreover, his ability to grasp complicated scientific matters and his fluency in multiple languages must have made him invaluable to the war effort. But he never discussed that phase of his life.
He told me about travelling of Japan in 1934, as part of an American baseball delegation that toured the country and played exhibition games. He didn’t tell me about the day he missed a game in Tokyo in order to climb to the top of the tallest building in the city and use a movie camera to film the harbor. Eight years later Gen. Jimmy Doolittle studied those pictures intently before launching an air raid on the Japanese capital.
He didn’t tell me about the day in 1944 that he attended a lecture by Nazi physicist Werner Heisenberg, who was known to be head of Germany’s effort to develop an atomic bomb. He carried a concealed loaded revolver into the lecture and was prepared to shoot Heisenberg if he determined the Germans were on the cusp of developing a bomb. He concluded that they weren’t close, and kept his weapon hidden.
These accounts emerged only after his death. I suspect there were other episodes that will never be known.
Moe Berg died in 1972 and, according to a hospital nurse, his last words were, “How did the Mets do today?”
I thought of all of this the other day while watching the movie “Oppenheimer.” I thought of it again a few days later when a “Jeopardy” question referred to Moe Berg.
I remember writing a piece about him on the day of his funeral. Before the piece went to print it was reviewed by Trentonian editor Gil Spencer, who asked me how long I had known him.
I had to take a breath before I answered.
“You know,” I said, “it’s been a little less than a year. But I feel like I’ve known him all my life.”
Then I had to take another breath.
“Actually, he’s known me that long. I’m not sure anybody ever knew him.”
A FEW STATISTICS (Wednesday’s games not included): Gerrit Cole of the Yankees is 13-4. He’s 12-0 in games in which his teammates have supported him with three runs or more … Trea Turner of the Phillies could set a record for most stolen bases in a season without being caught. His current total of 27 thefts would be enough to set the mark. All he has to do is finish the year with zero caught stealings … Since the All-Star break Mookie Betts has batted .371 and his Dodgers teammate Freddie Freeman has hit .370. This helps to explain why the Dodgers have gone 37-18 over that span … Corbin Burns of the Brewers is a right-handed pitcher. Nevertheless, left-handed batters are hitting only .170 against him … Despite the fact that he has missed 54 games, Aaron Judge is fifth in the AL in homers with 31.