The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg

by Nicholas Dawidoff

Book Overview

The only Major League ballplayer whose baseball card is on display at the headquarters of the CIA, Moe Berg has the singular distinction of having both a 15-year career as a catcher for such teams as... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679762892
• ISBN13: 9780679762898
• Release Date: May 1995
• Publisher: Vintage
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.01 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.1" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Baseball and Spys

I heard about this book from an old veteran at a Veteran's Day function. It is all I expected and more. Moe Berg was a supremely intelligent man, a baseball fanatic, and an enigmatic person. A genuine page turner

A REAL-LIFE JOHN LE CARRE CHARACTER

Moe Berg is truly one of the most interesting, and enigmatic, characters in sports history. What always fascinated me was how, after WWII and no longer in baseball, Berg never worked. He would stay at friends and relatives' homes throughout the country, reading multiple newspapers, and maintaining strict control of those papers. My guess, and this would make for an interesting investigative study, is that he stayed on the OSS/CIA payroll and was working for them, in some capacity: Dissecting the news, dealing with Communist espionage - or who knows, maybe he was working with foreign elemnets. Berg was something. He has to be considered a major hero. Surely the fact that he was an ex-ballplayer makes him stand out from the other heroes under "Wild Bill" Donovan, as does the fact that a Jew was sent to Nazi-controlled Finland to get German scientists. This is a terrific story. (...)

Skullduggery, twisted mentalities, wartime brutality ...

The skullduggery of spies; the warped mental state of the homeless vagabond, Jewish concerns in the war, and baseball on top of all that!Great reading.

Perfect Summer Reading

Here is a book that is beautifully written and also tells a great story. No, a really great story. I read about it in the Boston Globe where the reviewer said he couldn't put it down, and I bought it then and never read it. I just did. You should too. Bravo.

Fascinating story, well crafted

This book is among a handful of truly fascinating books I have read in the last few years. Berg's life was a truly remakrable collection of experiences--pro ball player, polyglot, and undercover agent. What more impressive resume could a person want in WWII-era America? Yet something was wrong in the life of Berg, and that is the story within the story that Dawidoff tells with a masterful stroke. At a time when WWII and its heroes form the glamorous backdrop to so many films and books, it is refreshing to read a story set in that era about a remarkable man who was just as much a human being as we are today.