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The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg (Paperback)

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

3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Dawidoff uncovers the enigmatic life of former major-league catcher Berg, who, following his baseball stint, became a spy for the OSS assigned to find information on Nazi nuclear capabilities.
Copyright 1995 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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

Paperback: 453 pages
Publisher: Vintage (May 30, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0679762892
ISBN-13: 978-0679762898
Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 1 inches
Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (29 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #206,636 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
John Kieran created the public Moe Berg. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Moe Berg, New York, Red Sox, White Sox, Bernard Berg, United States, Von Karman, Howard Dix, New Jersey, Babe Ruth, Professor Berg, Warren Berg, Werner Heisenberg, John Kieran, Ted Lyons, Charles Owen Collection, Estella Huni, Ethel Berg, Lise Meitner, Paul Scherrer, President Roosevelt, Joe Cronin, Latin America, Sam Goudsmit, World Series

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Citations (learn more)

This book cites 41 books:

Heisenberg's War: The Secret History Of The German Bomb by Thomas Powers on 13 pages
Tune in Yesterday: The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio, 1925-1976 by John Dunning in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
Brighter than a Thousand Suns: A Personal History of the Atomic Scientists by Robert Jungk in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
Engineer in Charge: A History of the Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, 1917-1958 by James R. Hansen in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (Aviation Classics) by Ted W. Lawson in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)

See all 41 books this book cites

28 books cite this book:

Heisenberg and the Nazi Atomic Bomb Project, 1939-1945: A Study in German Culture by Paul Lawrence Rose on page 225, page 291, and Back Matter
The Fly Swatter: How My Grandfather Made His Way in the World by Nicholas Dawidoff in Front Matter, and Back Matter
Breakdown : How the Secret of the Atomic Bomb Was Stolen by Richard Melzer in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
Heisenberg Probably Slept Here: The Lives, Times, and Ideas of the Great Physicists of the 20th Century (Wiley popular science) by Richard P. Brennan on page 176, and Back Matter
Triumph and Tragedy in Mudville: A Lifelong Passion for Baseball by Stephen Jay Gould on page 322, and page 337

See all 28 books citing this book

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	91% buy the item featured on this page: The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg 3.4 out of 5 stars (29) $10.85
	4% buy The Fly Swatter: Portrait of an Exceptional Character 5.0 out of 5 stars (4) $13.45
	3% buy Moe Berg: The Spy Behind Home Plate (Jps Young Biography Series.) 4.0 out of 5 stars (2) $13.00
	2% buy The Crowd Sounds Happy: A Story of Love and Madness in an American Family (Vintage) 4.5 out of 5 stars (10) $10.20

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Customer Reviews

29 Reviews

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

Average Customer Review

3.4 out of 5 stars (29 customer reviews)

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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)

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.

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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 (iserotta@aol.com) "iserotta" (highland park, illinois) - See all my reviews

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.

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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

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. (...)

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars great book
Bought this book for a gift; apparently, it's a great read for the young adult in your life!

Published 6 days ago by Roberta Fineberg

3.0 out of 5 stars Its a book you finish just because you started it
Maybe I am too young to appreciate Moe Berg but halfway through the book I wasn't sure I even liked Moe Berg anymore or cared about reading more about him. Read more

Published 5 months ago by J. Carbone

5.0 out of 5 stars Baseball and Spys
I heard about this book from an old veteran at a Veteran's Day function.
It is all I expected and more. Read more

Published 6 months ago by L. Miller

3.0 out of 5 stars Bait-and-switch
I'm giving up on this book about 3/4 of the way through it. That's a rarity for me, but this one is a bit of a slog and I've grown weary. Read more

Published 8 months ago by Robert Schiller

1.0 out of 5 stars A book that I found difficult to get interested in
I felt like I was reading the sports pages for the first 140 pages. Too many stats, facts and figures. Read more

Published 23 months ago by SW FL Reader

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Biography, Unusual Person
This interesting biography covers a most unusual person. Moe Berg (1902-1972) was a talented linguist, ballplayer, and U.S. Read more

Published on January 21, 2006 by K.A.Goldberg

2.0 out of 5 stars Not a pleasant person
Moe Berg was completely unpleasant. I found myself wondering why I should care about his life. He was a mediocre ballplayer, a mediocre scholar and a mediocre spy. Read more

Published on April 7, 2005 by James Heitzer

3.0 out of 5 stars A Trudge
I'd been anticipating reading this book for some time, but getting through it was a chore. Dawidoff's writing and research are thorough. Read more

Published on July 23, 2002 by James Carragher

3.0 out of 5 stars The Spy Who Couldn't Come in From The Cold
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... Read more

Published on June 6, 2002 by scott browne

5.0 out of 5 stars Skullduggery, twisted mentalities, wartime brutality ...
The skullduggery of spies; the warped mental state of the homeless vagabond, Jewish concerns in the war, and baseball on top of all that!

Great reading.

Published on March 25, 2001 by Paul Bohannon

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