The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg Author: Visit Amazon's Nicholas Dawidoff Page | Language: English | ISBN:
0679762892 | Format: EPUB
The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg Description
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.
See all Editorial Reviews
- Paperback: 453 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (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)
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).
The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg Preview
Link
Please Wait...