Spring, when a young man's thoughts turn to baseball, young ladies, and... espionage?
Well, that last part may seem unusual, but allow me to explain.
I've been a baseball fan all my life. Even in recent years, when I have rarely felt the urge to watch professional sports, I often find myself reading about the great ballplayers of my youth or watching highlights of games from the past.
One of my great pleasures as a boy was reading about baseball's earlier eras and its great heroes (or tragic figures) and colorful characters.
Yes, in the pre-internet world we read tangible books. One of my early favorites was a book entitled, Baseball Anecdotes. If you have a baseball fan in your family I highly recommend it. Paperback copies are inexpensive and the book can be easily read 1 or 2 chapters at a time.
Here was my early introduction to a journeyman ballplayer of the 1920s and 1930s named Moe Berg.
Berg was a journeyman in more ways than one. In addition to playing for six major league teams (including two separate runs with the Cleveland Indians) in his 15-year career, Moe was an avid traveler who spoke seven (or more) languages with great skill. He was also a spy.
Moe parlayed a 1934 trip to Japan into a clandestine sightseeing tour of Tokyo. With a newsreel film camera hidden in his kimono, Berg managed to sneak up to the roof of a tall hospital building and film the Tokyo skyline and its harbors! For years it was believed that his film footage, loaned to the U.S. government, was helpful in aiding WWII bombers in their air raids on Tokyo.
What is certain is that Moe Berg was recruited into the war's new intelligence program, the OSS, an early forerunner to today's CIA.
In fact, while watching SportsCentury's episode on Moe Berg, I noticed that several of the interviewees were not old teammates and sportswriters, but OSS spies and CIA historians!
This aspect of Berg's life and work was expanded on in an episode of the Baseball Phd podcast. The following is taken from CIA historian Linda McCarthy's portion of that podcast, as she describes Berg's value to the war's intelligence program:
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