Misc.
MOE BERG – Baseball Player-Scholar-Spy
1/8/14
The topic today is MOE BERG.
Moe was born in 1902 and died in 1972, in Belleville, NJ. He played baseball for 15 years with the Dodgers, White Sox, Indians and the Red Sox. His overall batting average was .243. He had a lifetime total of 441 hits and 206 RBI’s during that period. His salary averaged about $4,000 per year. Certainly, he was an extremely marginal player.
It was intriguing, then, when he was selected to tour Japan with Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, in 1934. But, Moe wasn’t an ordinary guy.
He grew up in Newark where his father was a pharmacist. He graduated high school at the top of his class. He then went on to Princeton which was most unusual for a Jewish boy, at that time. He graduated magna cum laude specializing in languages.
Although he was offered a Princeton teaching position, he elected to join the Dodgers because they paid more. During the off season, he completed his law degree at Columbia where he graduated 2nd in his class.
Prior to that 1934 trip, Moe was recruited by the United States as a spy. While in Japan, he sneaked up to the roof, of a building, and took photos of the city. These photos were extensively used, later, during the Doolittle Raids.
During the war he worked on several other missions for the OSS. One of them was to help determine how close Germany was to an atomic bomb. In fact he taught himself a great deal about nuclear physics and became an expert.
He was parachuted into Europe on several missions. During these encounters he discovered the locations of several atomic facilities. This information led to successful bombing raids, by the Allies.
During 1944/45, at great risk, as a Jew, he spent time in Germany helping to arrange for the capture of several prominent German scientists, before the Russians could get to them.
He was awarded the Medal of Merit, the highest civilian award during the war. It was accepted, by his sister, after his death in 1972 and is now on display in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
The CIA also prominently displays his baseball card in their Hall of Fame lobby. Needless to say, it’s the only baseball card on display.
This marginal ball player helped plan the Doolittle Raids, in Japan, seriously disrupted German atomic bomb development and then made considerable efforts to our nuclear and space efforts with the assistance of those recruited scientists.
Morris “Moe” Berg