Morris Berg was an American baseball player and espionage agent. He was a coach in Major League Baseball. He also served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II.
Background
Morris Berg was born on March 2, 1902, in New York City, New York, United States, and raised in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Bernard Berg, a pharmacist, and Rose Tashker. His brother, Dr. Samuel Berg, on military assignment in Nagasaki six weeks after the dropping of the atomic bomb, authored the first study of the effects of radioactive fallout on humans.
Education
Morris Berg graduated from Princeton University in 1923. Later he attended Columbia Law School and was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1929.
Career
Berg made his major league debut in 1923. Early success was followed by a disappointing lack of hitting, and Berg was demoted to the minor leagues. He resurfaced with the Chicago White Sox in 1926. Within a year, he was made a catcher; this move enabled him to have a steady, if unspectacular, major league career. Berg made it clear throughout his life that his commitment to baseball, which some considered a waste of his other considerable talents, was absolutely correct for him.
His baseball talents were not of the first rank; he was considered a strong defensive player as a catcher, a modestly effective batter, and a woefully slow base runner. He played a utility role throughout most of his career (only once, in 1929, did he appear in more than one hundred games). He was ideally suited to function as a late-inning defensive replacement, an occasional pinch hitter, and a brainy presence in the dugout and the bullpen. A consummate team player, Berg understood that his prime contribution had to do with preparing younger, more gifted teammates for on-the-field successes. Berg, a contemporary of many of baseball's greatest and larger-than-life performers, was described by no less an authority than Casey Stengel as the "strangest fellah who ever put on a uniform. "
Berg also pursued his academic interests diligently. He voraciously read newspapers from around the world and accumulated a large personal library. He numbered scholars, diplomats, and entertainers among his acquaintances. In 1938 when Berg appeared on the nationally syndicated radioprogram "Information Please, " his stunning breadth of knowledge resulted in the National Broadcasting Company receiving 10, 000 phone calls from listeners wanting to know more about him. He became one of baseball's finest ambassadors and wrote a superb article for the Atlantic Monthly in September 1941 titled "Pitchers and Catchers, " which delineates the cat-and-mouse game played out by pitcher, catcher, and batter. Berg described the catcher as "the Cerberus of baseball. "
Berg was interested in foreign cultures and spent several off-seasons traveling in Europe and Asia. He was deeply interested in the Japanese and taught himself the language. He visited Japan twice, in 1932 and 1934, with fellow major leaguers to promote baseball via instruction and exhibition games. Berg carried with him a letter of introduction to the American embassy signed by Cordell Hull, secretary of state under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Evidently, Berg took some opportunities to film the sites of Japanese factories, munitions plants, harbors, refineries, and railroad yards. The film was used during the planning for 1942 bombing raids on Tokyo led by General Jimmy Doolittle.
With the outbreak of World War II, Berg actively solicited his friend, Nelson Rockefeller, the coordinator of the Office of Inter-American Affairs, to get him a position with that office. He retired from baseball and spent 1941 to 1943 as a roving goodwill ambassador in Latin America. He also reported on pro-Axis sentiment in Central and South America. Thus, when General William Donovan began recruiting operatives for the Office of Strategic Services, Berg was a natural choice given his proficiency with foreign languages, his excellent physical condition, his prior dealings in espionage, and his poise in high-pressure situations. Documents released after World War II reveal that Berg was an operative of major importance in the European theater. The major thrust of his work had to do with determining what progress German scientists were making toward the successful manufacture of atomic weapons. Using a variety of disguises, including those of a German officer and a graduate student of physics, he also arranged for prominent European scientists to escape to the United States.
The post war years did not treat Berg well. A failed business venture and difficulties with the Internal Revenue Service embittered him. Although he continued to perform occasional, minor espionage activity, he struck friends and acquaintances as increasingly eccentric. Never one to seek the stability of home (he shuttled between his brother's home and his sister's home, both in Newark, New Jersey), marriage (he was a lifelong bachelor), or job, Berg seemed to rely for survival on a Gatsbyesque celebrity of anonymity: appearing out of nowhere at social, athletic, and academic events, dropping in on friends unannounced and staying on as a guest for weeks, reading and note-taking obsessively, and then vanishing for periods of time. Baseball remained the sole anchor for Berg and he was a frequent presence at major league parks. In 1972, Berg aggravated an internal injury and entered a hospital. His last words were reported to have been, "How did the Mets do today?"
Achievements
Personality
Quotes from others about the person
"We'd all sit around and listen to him discuss the Greeks, Romans, Japanese, anything. Hell, we didn't know what he was talking about, but it sure sounded good. "
"He was different because he was different. He made up for all the bores in the world. He did it softly, stepping on no one. " - Ted Lyons