Reese Kaplan -- A Blockbuster Story Based in Fact, Not Fiction

With all of the media furor over the Barbie movie, the Oppenheimer movie and others that recently were foisted on the public for purposes of entertainment and education, there's a heretofore mostly neglected blockbuster movie waiting to be made.  Suppose there was a little known individual who grew up in Newark, NJ whose day to day job was not going nearly as well as he'd hoped, but instead an off-the-field talent led to him getting involved in high government espionage and potentially assasination while still operating under a cloak of anonymity?  Furthermore, what if his first foray into this arcane field of spies, secret agents and military endorsed events that could change world history actually began during his former career where this quiet but athletic man took some very secret photos while in the country of Japan prior to the start of World War II while being included with a group of coworkers blissfully unaware of what he was doing?  Oh yeah...his coworkers included such high profile people as Babe Ruth, Lefty Gomez and Lou Gehrig.  The man's name is Moe Berg.

As a baseball player, Berg was the ultimate backup catcher.  His career numbers were nothing special at all.  He broke in with the Brooklyn Dodgers at age 21 back in 1923 where he got 129 at-bats while hitting no home runs, driving in just six runs and hitting .186.  That was not exactly the start of an All Star career.  He was out of the majors until his next chance in 1926 through 1930 with the Chicago White Sox.  His best year then was in 1929 when he earned 352 at-bats, the most ever in his career, while hitting a much improved .267 with no home runs and 47 RBIs.  One of his teammates quipped about the man called "The brainiest man in baseball" and a writer gave him the nickname "Professor Berg."  One of his teammates said "The man can speak seven languages but he can't hit in any of them."

For a guy who wasn't much of a weapon in the game was able to wind up hanging around the major leagues as a quality back up catcher well into his late 30s until retiring from the game at age 37 after five years witt the Boston Red Sox.  In between those earlier stints and this final one, Berg also had stops twice with the Cleveland Indians and also with the original Washington Senators,  In some seasons he had as few as 12 and 13 at-bats.  At the end of his playing days, the back of his baseball card showed a lifetime .243 hitter with 6 home runs and 206 RBIs.  That's not a whole lot for a career that spanned 15 playing years.

During the 1930s he accompanied some major league star players to Japan on a goodwill tour for the sport of baseball which helped reinforce the fervor for the game to the nation where it was first introduced in 1872.  The trip was enormously popular and the band of baseball pros indeed made a very favorable impression that the commissioner's office had hoped would take place.  Berg didn't play as he was again thrust into the role of a backup catcher, but it was his knack for languages that made him an invaluable part of the trip to Asia.  

Being fluent in Japanese, Berg did his first project assisting the US Government that was concerned about Japan's military and political agendas that included incursions into other Asian territories.  Berg was able to escape from some of the planned celebrity activiites planned and went to St. Luke's Hospital where he said in Japanese for the employees located there that he was making a visit on behalf of an American ambassador to see his maternity-need daughter.  

He was admitted and he privately tossed the bouquet of flowers, never making that visit but instead dressed up in a kimono he was able to sneak into a high platform area for taking pictures profiling the skyline of the city of Tokyo as well as showing the prt where boats and ships could make ingress and egress during military operations.  This footage was forwarded to the US government who like Berg were less interested in the mantra of preserving piece through baseball and more about the probable upcoming war that would pit Japanese and other nations' citizens against Americans and other nations throughout most of Europe.  

While this one incursion is fraught with the intrigue, costumery and a genuine spy storyline, it's barely scratching the surface of all that Berg did while being a clandestine government employee after his playing career ended.  A book entitled The Catcher Was a Spy by author Nicholas Dawidoff that was later made into a 2018 movie by the same title which frankly failed miserably both in execution and in box office sales.  Somehow the talented cast was not directed well and the film site critics like Rotten Tomatoes give it below average ratings citing how the film left its star Paul Rudd and the real exploits of Moe Berg disconnected and lacking impact. 

Tomorrow we'll delve into the actual tasks Berg was assigned to do after he left the game and became an intelligence officer full time.  It will cover his period with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and later his brief tenure at the newly created Central Intelligence Agency that expunged 90% of the OSS employees it was seeking to replace.