Book Log 2016 #12: The Catcher Was a Spy by Nicholas Dawidoff

Even without the spying, Moe Berg would have been one of the more peculiar men to play major league baseball. He was an Ivy League-educated lawyer, had an interest in languages, and was an inveterate reader. That he managed 17 seasons is equally surprising, given his weak bat and lack of playing time (he only played in more than 100 games once). It seems like he was kept around as much for his rapport with pitchers and clubhouse presence than anything he did on the field.


In many ways that sums up Berg's life. He seems like the sort of guy who just showed up, and you didn't mind him hanging around.

As for the spying, the book suggests that his contributions in that area were as thin as those he made with his bat. It's as likely that Berg embellished his missions (such as photographing the Tokyo skyline while on an all-star tour and attending a physics lecture in Switzerland to potentially assassinate Werner Heisenberg) than they were actual assignments. The knack for embellishment crops up elsewhere in his life, as Berg's gift for langauge, while real, was not the fluency in a dozen tongues that it was made out to be, and his attempts to learn physics before going to Switzerland were a mixed bag at best.

All of this leads to the saddest part of the book, the chronicle of Berg's appearances after his retirement from baseball. These were typically unexpected (both in the coming and going), with several people noting that Berg would seem to recognize them, but then either ignore them or give a signal to not show recognition, almost as if he was on a spy mission. To me this reads as someone who is mentally ill and drifting to survive. It also makes me wonder if baseball was the one thing that kept Berg at least somewhat in reality (the author tries his hand at armchair psychology as well, focusing on Berg's relationship with his father, and he's probably closer to the mark than I am).

I'd wanted to read this for a while, and was a little disappointed in it, primarily in the post-baseball chronology of Berg sightings. I felt like it dragged a bit, though I can understand the desire to give as much information about Berg's life at a time when it was hard to pin him down. Maybe I'll like the film adaptation starring Paul Rudd better.