Lesson of Moe Berg: Sometimes, we’re not what we appear to be

Someone recently sent me this story about Moe Berg, the strangest Jew ever to play baseball:

When baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went on tour in baseball-crazy Japan in 1934, some fans wondered why a third-string catcher named Moe Berg was included. Although he played with five major-league teams from 1923 to 1939, he was a mediocre ball player. But Moe was regarded as the brainiest ballplayer of all time.’’

“In fact, Casey Stengel once said: “That is the strangest man ever to play baseball.”

When the baseball stars went to Japan and Moe Berg went with them, many people wondered why he went with “the team.” The answer was simple: Moe Berg was a United States spy, working undercover with the CIA. Moe spoke 15 languages — including Japanese — and he had two loves: baseball and spying.

In Tokyo, garbed in a kimono, Berg took flowers to the daughter of an American diplomat being treated in St. Luke’s Hospital, the tallest building in the Japanese capital. He never delivered the flowers. The ballplayer ascended to the hospital roof and filmed key features: the harbor, military installations, railway yards, etc. Eight years later, General Jimmy Doolittle studied Berg’s films in planning his spectacular raid on Tokyo.

His father disapproved of his baseball career and never once watched his son play. In Barringer High School, Moe learned Latin, Greek and French. He read at least 10 newspapers every day.

He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton, having added Spanish, Italian, German and Sanskrit to his linguistic quiver. During further studies at the Sorbonne and Columbia Law School, he picked up Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Arabic, Portuguese and Hungarian — 15 languages in all, plus some regional dialects.

While playing baseball for Princeton University, Moe Berg would describe plays in Latin or Sanskrit.