Before He Was a Catcher or a Spy: Moe Berg
Before He Was a Catcher or a Spy
Moe Berg’s year with the 1925 Reading Keys
Brian Engelhardt from the Berks History Center will present a program on Princeton graduate Moe Berg, who spent most of his 15 year career in the major leagues as a backup catcher, playing for several teams with non-descript career statistics except that he was a great defensive catcher and handler of pitchers. More notable was that Berg was conversant in at least ten languages, with the joke about him during his baseball career being that, “He spoke ten languages, but couldn’t in any of them.” (That’s it for any more funny stuff. Brian is saving any other humorous material for the program.)
After retiring from baseball, Berg, became a spy, working for the OSS during World War II, performing a number of dangerous missions. Berg was subject of a fictionalized (and highly inaccurate but very entertaining) film done last year starring Paul Rudd, Jeff Daniels, Siena Miller and Paul Giamatti – as well as a documentary film which has been highly praised now being circulated nationally, both based on his 1994 biography “The Catcher Was a Spy.” A fascinating and enigmatic person, the Moe Berg who played for the 1925 Reading Keys before he hit the big time in the major league, played shortstop and didn’t catch, must less do any spying at that point in his career, but still was an interesting study. Berg is the only former baseball player with his baseball card on display in CIA Headquarters, is now the subject of an exhibit in the National Baseball Hall of Fame.