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Rating: 
Summary: Strange Man, Great Story
Review: I came across this book in a bookstore and was immediately intrigued. I had just finished bios on Ted Williams and Rogers Hornsby. This was a very different story. Moe Berg was not a great baseball player. He was a backup catcher who bounced around the majors for a number of years. Because he played alongside Babe Ruth, Eddie Collins, Ted Williams, etc., the book contains a number of great baseball anecdotes. The real fascination here, of course, is Moe Berg's life inside and outside of baseball. "The Catcher was a Spy" tells the story of a complex man who could have been a decent baseball player but found himself more interested in reading a dozen newspapers a day. Whether he actually became a "spy" during the war is questionable. He did do extensive travelling in Japan and Europe in the Forties spending time with such notables as Albert Einstein. As Moe Berg slows down after the war, so does the book. He becomes a wanderer relying on old friends to take him in for a few weeks at a time. You get the sense that this was an intelligent and kind man who had great potential. At the same time, Moe Berg was a very odd individual. This of course is what makes the book a great read.
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Summary: A Trudge
Review: I'd been anticipating reading this book for some time, but getting through it was a chore. Dawidoff's writing and research are thorough. Berg left behind a wealth of personal material and many who knew him were still alive and available by phone or personal interview to Dawidoff. Hundreds of anecdotes and details about Berg's life emerge from these resources, and Dawidoff marches them all past the reader. The question is "Why?" Berg never becomes very interesting. It is well-known that he was a mediocre major league catcher. He was not much better as a spy, excelling mostly at running up large expense accounts. His tradecraft was abysmal; making and keeping notes to himself about briefings he received is such a fundamental error as to be ludicrous. After more than 300 pages it remained hard for me to take Berg seriously in any of his endeavors. In the end this is the biography of a moderately interesting obsessive dilettante, whose avoidance of normal human contact except on his own often strange terms seems almost pathological. Dawidoff tries valiantly but a New Yorker profile of about one-tenth this length would have been a sufficient account of Moe Berg's mildly curious life.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating guy, slightly less fascinating book.
Review: I'd never heard of Moe Berg before I received this book as a gift. Berg was a really unusual character, and I'm glad I read the book. Professional baseball catcher, intellectual, and OSS agent is a unique combination. One is left thinking, though, that the book could have been a lot shorter. The author tells stories repeatedly from different sources and different angles. He just didn't trust himself enough to synthesize more, and his editor didn't push as hard as he should have. It's enough to convince any future biographer to abandon hope of finding anything new--except perhaps a better way to tell the story. Berg didn't, by the way, save the world from nuclear annihilation, at least if this account is accurate.
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Summary: sets the record straight
Review: Many previous writers here appear to have preconceived notions of Moe Berg and his biographer. I do not. Moe Berg may have inflated his own importance to the war effort, but he was still a man of some importance, a true patriot, and possessed of great intelligence. To call someone who lasted all those years in the major leagues a second rate catcher is mean spirited. He may not have ever been the best catcher on any team, but he was still in the rarified air of the majors for more than a decade. Not many people can put that on their resume. To call him a second rate spy diminishes the bravery and patriotism it took for him to do what he did. And to call him a second rate human being is only to call attention to oneself. Moe Berg was not perfect, and that is precisely what makes this book interesting. Berg's ego and boastfulness and his secretive nature and the silence he felt he owed the OSS make for a remarkable character. The author does a fine job of separating the boasts from the facts, gives Berg his due, and creates an interesting tale from the details.
Rating: 
Summary: A REAL-LIFE JOHN LE CARRE CHARACTER
Review: 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. (...)
Rating:
Summary: The Spy Who Couldn't Come in From The Cold
Review: Moe Berg was one of those people who could never conform to conventional life. He decided early on in his adult life to march to the beat of his own drummer, letting very few people know the true man. Nicholas Dawidoff in his book "The Catcher was a Spy" explores this strange individual.
Berg started out as a professional baseball player, who was a Princeton and Columbia Law School graduate. A star in high school and college but a medicore one in the pros. Berg was a man who liked being on a team but did not mind not playing very often, the antithesis of most athletes. Baseball gave him the opportunity to travel, meet people and do the things that interested him such as prowling old bookstores, reading tomes on linguistics and scientific topics. When Berg played all games were played in the afternoon giving him plenty of time to indulge in his solitary persuits. For the most part his teammates tended to be country boys or young men with limited educations, although it would be wrong to say there were no players in the 1920's or 1930's who went to college like Berg.
Berg got into the espionage business during World WarII working for "Wild Bill" Donovan's OSS. Moe was a skilled linguist familiar with six or seven different languages, he was also gifted enough to learn a great deal about atomic physics while trying to ferret out information about Germany's attempt to create an atomic bomb. His four years in the OSS were his salad days and he would live off these exploits the rest of his life. Donovan ran a very loose ship and Berg many times ignored his superiors orders, but because Donovan liked him he was able to avoid the rules and regulations.
This inability to conform to bureaucratic rules was his undoing after the war. Berg desparately wanted to join the CIA but those running the agency during peace-time expected field agents to account for their time and expenses something Moe could not or would not do.
The last 25 years of his life he became a total vagabond living on the charity of friends and family. He was a personable man and a spinner of yarns, but his stories always put himself in the best light. Berg floated from place to place never leeting anyone know him well or wearing out his welcome.
Dawidoff does a very good job describing Berg's life in baseball and the OSS, but the book bogs down in the chapters depicting his life when the CIA would not hire him except for several brief stints. Essentially, everyone who knew him said basically the same thing about him. A nice guy but aloof never going beyond a certain point in a relationship that he did not want you to know.
Considering the banalities that most athletes today spout the book is worth the read just to reminisce about a bygone era. Berg was an enigmatic individual and the jury is still out on how much he contributed to the war effort. Dawidoff believes he did both to the OSS and to the teams he played for during his career. Moe Berg's failing was not utilizing his intellectual talents beyond living the life of a total free spirit without any responsibility.
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