Moe Berg

Moe Berg was a Major League Baseball player who played 15 seasons, primarily with the Chicago White Sox and the Boston Red Sox.http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bergmo01.shtml He played baseball at Princeton before signing a major league contract with the Brooklyn Robins in 1923.http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Berg_Moe.html Berg primarily played catcher, finishing his major league career with a .243 batting average. He was an “excellent defensive catcher” according to the Society for American Baseball Research.http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=756&pid=962

Following his playing career, Berg was a spy during World War II, performing a variety of covert operations in Yugoslavia, Italy and elsewhere in Europe for the United States government.http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=756&pid=962 He was awarded the Medal of Merit for his service during the war but declined the honor.http://www.baseballlibrary.com/ballplayers/player.php?name=Moe_Berg_1902 Although he was highly educated, manager Casey Stengel said that Berg was also “the strangest man ever to play baseball”http://www.jewishsports.org/jewishsports/detail.asp?sp=24http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=756&pid=962 Berg lived with his family after World War II, rarely holding a full-time job, before dying in a fall at his sister's house in 1972.http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=756&pid=962

Berg was born on March 2, 1902 in Brooklyn, New York to Jewish parents of Russian descent who moved the family to Newark, New Jersey in 1908.http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Berg_Moe.html Berg began playing organized baseball through the Roseville Methodist Episcopal Church; he adopted the name “Runt Wolfe” to conceal his Jewish heritage.http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=756&pid=962 He attended New York University for one year before transferring to Princeton.http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=756&pid=962 He graduated magna cum laude with an undergraduate degree in modern languages in 1923.http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Berg_Moe.html He would turn down a position as a professor of Romance languages in Princeton in order to sign a contract with the Brooklyn Robins of the National League in 1923.http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=756&pid=962

Photos and videos of Tokyo that Berg took while touring the country with an all-star exhibition team in 1934 were used to plan Allied bombing raids during World War II.http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/venona/dece_berg.html During the war, Berg worked for the Office of Inter-American Affairs and the Office of Strategic Services.http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Berg_Moe.html His assignments included parachuting into Yugoslavia to determine the relative strengths of the resistance movement, to determine aid amounts and to assassinate a top Nazi scientist if he felt Germany was close to developing an atomic weapon.http://bioproj.sabr.org/bioproj.cfm?a=v&v=l&bid=756&pid=962

In 15 major league seasons comprising 1,813 at-bats, Berg batted .243 with six career home runs and 206 career runs batted in.http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bergmo01.shtml His best statistical season came in 1928 with the Chicago White Sox, when he played in 106 games and had a .288 batting average while receiving two votes in balloting for the American League's Most Valuable Player.http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Berg_Moe.html Along with the White Sox, Berg would also play with the Brooklyn Robins, Washington Senators and the Boston Red Sox.http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/bergmo01.shtml