Morris Berg, the brainiest guy in baseball

Not that great of a ball player, good, but not great, his card is the only baseball card displayed at CIA headquarters.

He knew fifteen languages, that had my attention, and I was thinking, but yes, was one of them hieroglyphics? No, but one of them was Sanskrit and that's just as bad. Yes, but was one of them sign language? No, but one was Arabic and that's backwards. You have to admit fifteen is a lot. His dad was against the whole baseball thing. Never did watch his son play. He was meant for bigger things than baseball. Nevertheless Berg did quite well there. And as a U.S. spy as well.

He went with a group to Japan in 1932 to teach baseball seminars at Japanese universities. When his group returned to the U.S. Berg remained to tour Japan then extending his travels all over the East through China, India, on through Egypt and on to Berlin, so all over the place employing his mad language skills.

A second group trip to Japan Berg was included incongruously with all-star players Babe Ruth, Lou Ghering, Earl Averlill, Charlie Gehringer, Jimmie Fox, and Left Gomez to play exhibitions against all-star Japanese teams.  (What fun is that? Nobody ever wins.) Berg delivered a welcome speech in Japanese and addressed the Japanese Diet.

Diet, that's their word for Parliament, their legislature.

See? You're talking Japanese already.

On that trip, while the rest were playing, Berg was scheduled to deliver flowers to the daughter of American ambassador at a hospital the tallest building on the reclaimed bit of Tokyo Bay. He had with him his own 16-mm Bell and Howell movie camera and cover letter from Movietones New indicating an agreement to film his tour allowing him to film a good portion of the city and the entire bay.

At the end of his baseball career and beginning of coaching Berg made a few appearances on a radio quiz show called Information Please performing impressively and advancing the interests of baseball until on the third appearance the host began asking questions just a bit too personal and that ended that.

After his playing career Berg was Boston Red Sox coach for one year 1940-1941

His story is odd, intermingling as it does with baseball and intelligence agencies OSS, SSU, and CIA

The attack on Pearl Harbor changed the arc of his baseball career.

He joined the effort through Rockefeller's Office of Inter-American Affairs. He  screened the footage he shot earlier of Tokyo Bay for military intelligence officers. The film is thought to have helped Jimmy Doolittle plan his raid. Berg was assigned to the Caribbean but soon left for more interesting things.

In the OSS he was parachuted into Yugoslavia to evaluate groups resisting Nazis. At this point he is his 40's. His evaluation was used to determine support for various resistance groups. He was involved in another project to nab Italian scientists and to scope out what they knew of Werner Heisenberg and of Carl Von Weizsächer.

He was used to ferret information about how far Germany had advanced toward developing an atomic bomb. He was a Jew sent to Zurich to hear a lecture by Heisenberg and Berg's instructions were to determine if sufficiently close to attaining the atomic bomb, then Berg's instructions were to kill Heisenberg.

Later, through various vicissitudes  he was offered coaching position for Boston Red Sox but refused. He was offered a coaching position with the Boston White Sox but refused. Later he was offered the Medal of Freedom but turned it down.

After the war, now early 1950's Berg asked CIA to send him to Israel. They refused but hired him for something else instead. His CIA contact in Europe reported Berg to be "a flake." His contract was not renewed. He tried again to serve the CIA but was never again accepted.

He deteriorated. Never worked after that. Lived with sibs until he died.

The Catcher Was a Spy Amazon.com