Three biographies have been written on his life!
He has appears to have followed three careers as well!
He began as a scholar par excellence with degrees from Princeton, Columbia Law School and graduate studies in philosophy at the Sorbonne. And he was fluent in 7 languages!
Next, he was a big league catcher for the Chicago White Sox, playing in 663 games ins 15 seasons and hitting .243 for his lifetime. Not a great player just a competent standby catcher.
Finally, Moe Berg (March 2, 1902-May 29, 1972) is best known as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner to the CIA). In 1934, he accompanied Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig on a baseball tour to Japan. One day, before a game, he climbed to the top of the tallest building in Japan and with his Bell and Howell 16MM motion picture camera took pictures of downtown Tokyo, its business district, its industrial section and its harbor. Here's an excerpt from one of his biographers:
He [Moe Berg] bluffs his way up onto the roof of the hospital, the tallest building in Tokyo at the time. And from underneath his kimono he pulls out a movie camera. He proceeds to take a series of photos panning the whole setting before him, which includes the harbor, the industrial sections of Tokyo, possibly munitions factories and things like that. Then he puts the camera back under his kimono and leaves the hospital with these films," says Nicholas Davidoff, a Berg biographer.
This footage may have been used by General Jimmy Doolittle (see blog for Dec. 14, 2009) in planning his famous April 1942 bombing raid over Tokyo in 1942.
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