Moe berg biography snopes

1. Morris “Moe” Berg: The major league baseball player turned secret agent.

Once dubbed “the brainiest man in baseball,” Berg was born in New York City to Ukrainian immigrants and raised in Newark, New Jersey. He played shortstop for Princeton, graduating in 1923 with a degree in modern languages. He signed with the Brooklyn Robins (later the Brooklyn Dodgers) and eventually played for the Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians (now Cleveland Guardians), Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox, before ending his playing career in 1939 with a lifetime batting average of .243.

In early 1942, soon after the United States entered World War II, Berg joined the Office of Inter-American Affairs, an agency formed to combat enemy propaganda in Latin America. In 1943, he became an officer with the OSS, where his work included gathering intelligence in Europe on Nazi efforts to construct an atomic bomb.

How Close was Hitler to the A-Bomb?

In December 1944, Berg was sent to Switzerland to potentially assassinate prominent German physicist Werner Heisenberg, who American officials suspect

The Catcher Was a Spy

1994 biography of Moe Berg by Nicholas Dawidoff

For the 2018 film adaptation, see The Catcher Was a Spy (film).

The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg is a 1994 biography written by Nicholas Dawidoff about a major league baseball player who also worked for the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency.[1]Moe Berg, the subject of the book, was an enigmatic person who hid much of his private life from those who knew him and who spent his later decades as a jobless drifter living off the good will of friends and relatives.

The book spent seven weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, which described the biography as "The life of Moe Berg, big-league catcher, O.S.S. agent, lady's man, and freeloader."[2]

Book summary

Early years

Berg was born in 1902 to a Jewish couple that lived in New York City, not far from the Polo Grounds, the home of the New York Giants baseball team. His father, Bernard Berg, was a pharmacist who emigrated from Ukraine in part to

Was Baseball Player Moe Berg a World War II Spy?

Washington Senators catcher Morris "Moe" Berg never made it into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but he was proud of his service to his country.

Claim:

Morris "Moe" Berg, a multilingual Princeton University graduate who played major league baseball throughout the 1920s and '30s, lived a life of danger and intrigue as a U.S. military intelligence officer in Europe during World War II.

Origin

American baseball player Morris "Moe" Berg, whose major league career spanned 15 unillustrious seasons on four different teams between 1923 and 1939, never advanced beyond the positions of backup catcher and substitute shortstop. He spent more time on the bench than he did on the diamond, it was said. "He can speak seven languages but he can't hit in any of them," a teammate complained of Berg, who, despite being a Princeton graduate and holding a law degree from Columbia University, led an outwardly unremarkable, even mysterious, life.

If not for his secret exploits as a military spy during World War II, in fact,

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