The Catcher Was a Spy (Hardcover)

by Nicholas Dawidoff (Author) "John Kieran created the public Moe Berg..." (more)
Key Phrases: Moe Berg, New York, Red Sox (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Berg (1902-1972) was a third-string major league catcher for 15 seasons, but it's not for his lack of baseball skills he's remembered, but rather for his intellectualism and eccentricity. After graduating from Princeton in 1923 (he later earned a law degree at Columbia Unversity and studied at the Sorbonne), Berg joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. Dawidoff shows us the oddball Berg: he sometimes read 10 newspapers a day and he had "a near mania for cleanliness." With the outbreak of WW II, Berg's ability to speak perhaps 18 languages was put to use working for "Will Bill" Donovan at the OSS. Berg played an important role in supplying information on the German nuclear threat and after the war helped corral European scientists for the U.S. After the OSS was disbanded, Berg was cashiered and awarded the Medal of Freedom, which he refused to accept. For the remaining 25 years of his life he became "a vagabond, living on wit and charm and the kindness of friends." Dawidoff, a freelance writer, has done a wonderful job of unraveling the legends around the mystifying Berg. Photos.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Baseball catcher, lawyer, and spy-Moe Berg was all of these, but first and foremost he was an enigma. All the ascertainable facts concerning Berg's life are presented here, including his 19 years as the most famous journeyman catcher in professional baseball; his stint at Columbia University and subsequent abortive legal career; his investigation of Germany's atomic bomb program for the Office of Strategic Services (a predecessor of the CIA) during World War II; and his postwar years, in which he lived off the kindness of friends. Dawidoff has done a lot of research on a fascinating subject but draws few conclusions, and his overall theme seems to be the impenetrability of his subject. In the end, Berg remains a mystery. A marginal purchase.
--Terry Madden, Boise State Univ. Lib., Id.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 453 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1st edition (June 28, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0679415661
• ISBN-13: 978-0679415664
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #700,833 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The catcher was inscrutable, July 22, 2001

By	Jason A. Miller (New York, New York USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg (Paperback)

Let's face it, most of us these days have never heard of Moe Berg, except in passing. Not a single one of the baseball games he played in still exists on videotape. He never saw action in a World Series game. By the end of his career as a ballplayer (variously for the Brooklyn Dodgers, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, Washington Senators, and Boston Red Sox), Berg plaed so infrequently, you might think him the Bartleby of baseball. When asked to play, the occasional second game of a doubleheader, he preferred not to. So he sat on the bench.

As Nicholas Dawidoff portrays him, Berg was a bizarre man who spent the final 25 years of his life essentially homeless, living off the charity of friends and family, trading his stories of pre-war baseball and wartime espionage for the offer of clean clothes, hot meals, and warm water for a bath. Trained in the law, and a skilled linguist who spoke half a dozen languages, he refused all employment, apart from the rare consulting job or intelligence mission.

While most print accounts of Berg make extravagant claims about his World War II espionage, Dawidoff boils everything down to what he can find on paper from the CIA (and its precursor agencies). The truth, as reported here, is that Berg's probing of German atomic secrets in 1945 was vital to the war effort, but that he hardly ever worked as a spy again. He simply pretended to be one, while remaining cloaked in an increasingly insular lifestyle.

The research for "The Catcher Was a Spy" is impeccable. Dawidoff interviewed hundreds of sources, and as a result the book's index is clogged with famous names -- athletes or otherwise (not too many other books quote both Ted Williams and Albert Einstein). However, most sources knew Berg only tangentially, and I spent a lot of time flipping back and forth to the index and the (extensive) footnotes to keep track of who was saying and thinking each particular passage.

The end result is a finely detailed psychoanalysis of Moe Berg, who passed away more than 20 years before this biography was written. Lots of secondary sources (and their opinions, in many cases, of a man they met for 2 or 3 days, half a century previous) are cited, as are many of Berg's private journals and letters. What no-one knows, however, including the author himself, is what Moe Berg really thought. Therefore Dawidoff spents a lot of time telling us what "Berg must have known", or "would have believed". For example, Berg was a non-practicing Jew who rarely mentioned the Holocaust, and Dawidoff is forced to fill in the gaps with auhorial speculation. Other speculations (on homosexuality, death by poisoning, and child molestation) seem forced or unnecessary.

"The Catcher Was A Spy" is often heavy going, as it seems to require equal knowledge of baseball, nuclear physics, and abnormal psychology. I found the account of Berg's postwar meanderings to be the most exciting material, although I wish these had been arranged chronologically rather than geographically. On the whole, I recommend the book, and wish that Berg had left behind a completed biography of his own. He had so many stories to tell.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars sets the record straight, November 2, 1999

By	ike serotta ([e-mail]) "iserotta" (highland park, illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg (Paperback)

Many previous writers here appear to have preconceived notions of Moe Berg and his biographer. I do not. Moe Berg may have inflated his own importance to the war effort, but he was still a man of some importance, a true patriot, and possessed of great intelligence. To call someone who lasted all those years in the major leagues a second rate catcher is mean spirited. He may not have ever been the best catcher on any team, but he was still in the rarified air of the majors for more than a decade. Not many people can put that on their resume. To call him a second rate spy diminishes the bravery and patriotism it took for him to do what he did. And to call him a second rate human being is only to call attention to oneself. Moe Berg was not perfect, and that is precisely what makes this book interesting. Berg's ego and boastfulness and his secretive nature and the silence he felt he owed the OSS make for a remarkable character. The author does a fine job of separating the boasts from the facts, gives Berg his due, and creates an interesting tale from the details.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A REAL-LIFE JOHN LE CARRE CHARACTER, June 10, 2004

By	Steven R. Travers (CALIFORNIA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg (Paperback)

Moe Berg is truly one of the most interesting, and enigmatic, characters in sports history. What always fascinated me was how, after WWII and no longer in baseball, Berg never worked. He would stay at friends and relatives' homes throughout the country, reading multiple newspapers, and maintaining strict control of those papers. My guess, and this would make for an interesting investigative study, is that he stayed on the OSS/CIA payroll and was working for them, in some capacity: Dissecting the news, dealing with Communist espionage - or who knows, maybe he was working with foreign elemnets. Berg was something. He has to be considered a major hero. Surely the fact that he was an ex-ballplayer makes him stand out from the other heroes under "Wild Bill" Donovan, as does the fact that a Jew was sent to Nazi-controlled Finland to get German scientists. This is a terrific story. (...)