Moe Berg '23 led other life off field

Moe Berg '23 may well have had the most successful professional baseball career of any Princetonian. But baseball was never more than a secondary pursuit for the man about whom it was once said that, "he can speak seven languages, but he can't hit in any of them."

No, Berg made his mark in an altogether different field — as a spy.

Berg was never a typical baseball player. Even at Princeton, he stood out. As the Tigers' star shortstop, the modern languages major communicated on the field in Latin.

He went on to spend 15 years in the major leagues, playing for a handful of teams. Always considered a strong defensive player, his best season came in 1929. Playing for the Chicago White Sox, he hit .288 and received two votes for the American League MVP award.

But for the majority of his career, Berg was a seldom-used backup catcher, retiring with a modest .243 batting average.

As questionable as Berg's baseball talent was, however, his intellect — especially his aptitude for foreign language — was beyond reproach. During the early part of his pro career, Berg spent his winters picking up degrees, first studying languages at the prestigious Sorbonne Institute in Paris and later graduating from Columbia Law School.

The education would serve Berg well once his playing career ended and he moved onto his second career in espionage. Actually, his first experience as a spy came in 1934, while still a player. Despite his lack of baseball qualifications, Berg accompanied an All-Star team of major leaguers that included Babe Ruth on an off-season trip to Japan.

While in Tokyo he made good use of his time. Dressing in a kimono and speaking Japanese well enough to pass for a native, he snuck onto the roof of a hospital and shot movies of the Tokyo skyline with his movie camera. His films were supposedly instrumental in the famous bombing raids of Jimmy Doolittle on the city in 1942.

In 1943, Berg moved into espionage full time, becoming an officer in the Office of Strategic Services, a precursor of the CIA. Although his skills as a spy are a subject of contention — some say he did more harm with his famous blunders than he did good — he was given many critical assignments.

Perhaps the most famous was his 1944 trip to Germany to listen to a speech by Werner Heisenberg, of Uncertainty Principle fame. Based on his knowledge of German and nuclear physics, Berg was assigned to determine if Heisenberg was close to finalizing plans for a nuclear bomb. If so, Berg was armed with a pistol with which to assassinate Heisenberg. But Berg left in peace, correct in his belief that the Germans had not yet cracked the nuclear puzzle.

After the war ended, Berg's feuds with superiors finally caught up with him — he had often been scolded for his missing or fabricated expense reports. Unhappy, he went as far as to decline a Medal of Merit. Towards the end of the decade, Berg's career as a spy unceremoniously ended. He never held another regular job.

Indeed, Berg's final years were rather unfitting for a man as accomplished as he was. A lifelong bachelor, he mooched off friends and family, mainly living with his brother Sam and sister Ethel.

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Even later in life, Berg was famously tight-lipped about his second career. Even his closest friends and family felt as if they didn't really know him. With age, his eccentricities grew. He spent much of his time reading newspapers from around the world, berating anyone who dared touch them. After his death in 1972, his ashes were scattered in an undisclosed location in Israel.

Although Berg's life has been the subject of much research and speculation — Nicholas Dawidoff's 1994 biography, "The Catcher Was A Spy," is the most comprehensive — who the real Moe Berg was remains an eternal enigma.

Which, fittingly, is just how he seems to have wanted it.