Customer Reviews

The Catcher Was a Spy

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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. (...)

This interesting biography covers a most unusual person. Moe Berg (1902-1972) was a talented linguist, ballplayer, and U.S. espionage agent for the OSS (forerunner of the CIA) before and during World War II and briefly for the CIA after the war. Author Nicholas Dawidoff describes Berg's mysterious life, including New Jersey boyhood, studies at Princeton and Columbia, and years as a second-string catcher for the Dodgers, White Sox, Indians, Senators and Red Sox. Even as a player Berg was better know for his linguistic skills and stealth than for his baseball exploits. Then readers learn of Berg's years as a spy, which probably began when Berg toured Japan with other big leaguers in 1934. The author describes Berg's secret wartime activities, including his 1944-45 mission to ascertain the status of Nazi nuclear research. We also read of his later years, when except for brief CIA assignments, Berg chose to freeload off relatives and friends rather than employ his superb linguistic and legal talents (he had a law degree). A Overall, Berg was an enigmatic man, and this biography, written two decades after his passing, fails to uncover much about him - perhaps Berg would have wanted it that way. Still, this is an interesting and nicely researched biography.

Nicholas Dawidoff deserves commendation for following through with a supremely difficult assignment: telling the life story of a man who never divulged personal details to anyone, friend or relative. The picture he paints is surprisingly sympathetic, given that the overall impression that comes from the book's last hundred pages is one of Berg the layabout, trading on people's fondness for him as a way to avoid making a living. He comes across as tremendously unpleasant, with his extensive list of personal peccadilloes, one suit of clothes, washed daily, and assumption that his stories were so entertaining that he could spin them for the thousandth time rather than render compensation for meals, overnight stays, books and anything else he consumed. Dawidoff hammers home the point that Berg had a uniquely engaging personality, in essence charming the pants off of nearly everyone he met. It must be true, because in this fascinating book, he seems merely an aggravating boor.

I felt like I was reading the sports pages for the first 140 pages. Too many stats, facts and figures. The storyline didn't flow, the plot was sluggish and languished for the most part. The story of Moe Berg's life should have packed some punch! I expected more pizazz. His life warranted it, but the book didn't deliver.

Dawidoff clearly spent much time and energy researching his subject, and by doing so he has demonstrated that Moe Berg was an enigma, but only by repeatedly retelling the same few Berg stories from every one of his numerous sources. The reader will suffer through each story as if he were present at each of Berg's recountings and then be reminded by the author that Berg was an engaging charmer. Although Berg's career as a spy is intriguing, Dawidoff lacks restraint and casts aspersions on Berg's character by suggesting he may have been a sexual deviant, but holds short of actually stating he was one because of lack of evidence. These stories retold by Dawidoff serve unnecessarily to taint the image of Berg. Dawidoff concludes his book without having illuminated his subject. Unfortunately there is simply not a sufficiently diverse body of information about Berg's life to warrant the writing of a book; this subject would have been better served as a "New Yorker" article.

(BTW, it should be a crime for the editors to have allowed the description, "the perspicacious Berg" to be used twice in the span of a book, let alone forty pages.)

The relaying of the historical data was somewhat interesting but you get the idea Moe Berg thought a bit too highly of himself, as does Nicholas Dawidoff. I have never been unable to drag myself through a book - there's a first time for everything. I just couldn't go on after making it 3/4 of the way through. Disappointing.

Moe Berg must of been some kind of slacker to have wasted most of his life as a drifter. I didn't care for the way a sinister light was cast around the Moe Berg mistique. Dawidoff should have either uncovered some real evidence indicating possible sexual deviance or just left the inuendos out all together. They did not improve his book and if anything lent an air of "trashyness" to an otherwise pleasent story. Speaking as someone who has been a "spy." Moe was a little too "spooky." Many people have views as to what Berg did and did not accomplish, but I would submit that Dawidoff is pretty close to, right on the money. My final advice is to not pay full price for this book, and when you get it enjoy it for what it is, a guess...at a mysterious man's life.

Moe Berg was one of those people who could never conform to conventional life. He decided early on in his adult life to march to the beat of his own drummer, letting very few people know the true man. Nicholas Dawidoff in his book "The Catcher was a Spy" explores this strange individual.
Berg started out as a professional baseball player, who was a Princeton and Columbia Law School graduate. A star in high school and college but a medicore one in the pros. Berg was a man who liked being on a team but did not mind not playing very often, the antithesis of most athletes. Baseball gave him the opportunity to travel, meet people and do the things that interested him such as prowling old bookstores, reading tomes on linguistics and scientific topics. When Berg played all games were played in the afternoon giving him plenty of time to indulge in his solitary persuits. For the most part his teammates tended to be country boys or young men with limited educations, although it would be wrong to say there were no players in the 1920's or 1930's who went to college like Berg.
Berg got into the espionage business during World WarII working for "Wild Bill" Donovan's OSS. Moe was a skilled linguist familiar with six or seven different languages, he was also gifted enough to learn a great deal about atomic physics while trying to ferret out information about Germany's attempt to create an atomic bomb. His four years in the OSS were his salad days and he would live off these exploits the rest of his life. Donovan ran a very loose ship and Berg many times ignored his superiors orders, but because Donovan liked him he was able to avoid the rules and regulations.
This inability to conform to bureaucratic rules was his undoing after the war. Berg desparately wanted to join the CIA but those running the agency during peace-time expected field agents to account for their time and expenses something Moe could not or would not do.
The last 25 years of his life he became a total vagabond living on the charity of friends and family. He was a personable man and a spinner of yarns, but his stories always put himself in the best light. Berg floated from place to place never leeting anyone know him well or wearing out his welcome.
Dawidoff does a very good job describing Berg's life in baseball and the OSS, but the book bogs down in the chapters depicting his life when the CIA would not hire him except for several brief stints. Essentially, everyone who knew him said basically the same thing about him. A nice guy but aloof never going beyond a certain point in a relationship that he did not want you to know.
Considering the banalities that most athletes today spout the book is worth the read just to reminisce about a bygone era. Berg was an enigmatic individual and the jury is still out on how much he contributed to the war effort. Dawidoff believes he did both to the OSS and to the teams he played for during his career. Moe Berg's failing was not utilizing his intellectual talents beyond living the life of a total free spirit without any responsibility.