Wednesday, April 26, 2017

Moe Berg - Who Knew? A Baseball Player and an American Spy?

Who knew???



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 very 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 all the baseball stars went to Japan, Moe Berg went with them and many people wondered why he went with "the team"



The answer was simple: Moe Berg was a United States spy, working undercover with the Office of Strategic Services (predecessor of today's 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 ball-player 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 and never once watched his son play. In Barringer High School, Moe learned Latin, Greek and French. Moe read at least 10 newspapers everyday.

He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton - having added   Spanish, Italian, German and Sanskrit to his linguistic quiver. During further studies at the Sorbonne, in Paris, 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.



During World War II, Moe was parachuted into Yugoslavia to   assess the value to the war effort of the two groups of partisans there.  He reported back that   Marshall Tito's forces were widely supported by the people and Winston Churchill ordered all-out support   for the Yugoslav underground fighter, rather than Mihajlovic's Serbians.

The parachute jump at age 41 undoubtedly was a challenge. But   there was more to come in that same year. Berg penetrated German-held Norway, met with members of the   underground, and located a secret heavy-water plant - part of the Nazis' effort to build an atomic bomb.

His information guided the Royal Air Force in a bombing raid to destroy that plant.




There still remained the question of how far had the Nazis progressed in the race to build the first Atomic bomb.  If the Nazis were successful, they would win the war.  Berg  (under the code name "Remus") was sent to Switzerland to hear leading German physicist Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Laureate, lecture and determine if the Nazis were close to building an A-bomb.  Moe managed to slip past the SS guards at the auditorium, posing as a Swiss graduate student.  The spy carried in his pocket a pistol and a cyanide pill.

If the German physicist indicated the Nazis were close to building a   weapon, Berg was to shoot him - and then swallow the cyanide pill.  Moe, sitting in the front row, determined that the Germans were nowhere near their goal, so he complimented Heisenberg on his speech and walked him back to his hotel.

Moe Berg's report was distributed to Britain's Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and key figures in the team developing the Atomic Bomb. Roosevelt responded: "Give my regards to the catcher.”

Most of Germany's leading physicists had been Jewish and had fled the Nazis mainly to Britain and the United States.  After the war, Moe Berg was awarded the Medal of Freedom - America 's   highest honor for a civilian in wartime. But Berg refused to accept it   because he couldn't tell people about his exploits.

After his death, his sister accepted the Medal. It now hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown.




Moe Berg's baseball card is the only card on display at the CIA.


A movie about his story is expected to be released in 2018.  I can't wait to see it!

http://moebergfilm.org/



So now you know.

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

SPORTS BOOKSHELF By Harvey Frommer

SPORTS BOOKSHELF

By Harvey Frommer



NBA Play-offs looming and big-time books about basketball all over the

place. What follows is your faithful reviewers picks – all slam dunks.

Golden by Marcus Thompson II (Touchstone, $26.00, 259 pages) is sub-

titled “the miraculous rise of Seth Curry” and it is all about that and much more.

Thompson, who it claimed has been witness to every dribble of Curry’s pro career”

and had limitless access to his subject and all those around him that formed “the

family and friends and support circle” made good use of it. This is a terrific book

insightful, at times controversial, always worth reading. MUST READ

“Return of the King” by Brian Windhorst and Dave McMenamin (Grand

Central Publishing, $28.00, 264v pages) is all about as its sub-title proclaims:

LeBron James, The Cleveland Cavaliers and the Greatest Comeback in NBA

History. Both authors like Thompson II had limitless access it seems to the words

and the deeds of the player many consider the brightest star in the NBA galaxy.

We are there frontstage and backstage, thru the ups and downs, inside the locker

room and on the court. TERRIFIC READ


“FURIOUS GEORGE” by George Karl with Curt Sampson

(HarperCollins, $27.99, 228 pages) is a heck of a book that covers four decades of

George Karl’s experiences in the National Basketball Association. The ex-coach

spares no one as he recounts all the details of what his basketball life was like.

Controversial, eye opening, on point, honest – if only all sports memoirs were like

this. OUTSTANDING




BOOKENDS: College Football’s Greatest edited by Bill Syken (Sports

Illustrated, $32.95, 256 pages) is a mother lode of images, stats. Accounts of the

programs, the big men on campus, the running backs, the coaches, the rivalries.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Coming this fall:

http://www.frommerbooks.com/ultimate-yankees.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------
About the Author:   One of the most prolific and respected sports journalists and oral historians in the United States, author of the autobiographies of legends Nolan Ryan, Tony Dorsett, and Red Holzman, Dr. Harvey Frommer is an expert on the New York Yankees and has arguably written more books, articles and reviews on the New York Yankees than anyone.   In 2010, he was selected by the City of New York as an historical consultant for the re-imagined old Yankee Stadium site, Heritage Field. A professor in the MALS program at Dartmouth College, Frommer was dubbed “Dartmouth’s Mr. Baseball” by their alumni magazine.
His The Ultimate Yankee Book will be published fall 2017. Pre-order from Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Yankee-Book-Beginning-Today-Essential/dp/1624144330
“As a lifelong Yankees fan, I was devouring every last delicious new detail about my beloved Bronx Bombers in this fabulous new book.” —Ed Henry, author of 42 Faith: The Rest of the Jackie Robinson Story
Article is Copyright © 2017 by Harvey Frommer.  All rights reserved worldwide.

Frommer’s work: His work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, USA Today, Men’s Heath, The Sporting News, Bleacher Report and more

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Foreword: Rickey and Robinson By Harvey Frommer

Foreword: Rickey and Robinson
By Harvey Frommer




Every time baseball season starts up and April rolls around my

thoughts turn back to a long time ago. That past is as real in many

ways as the present.

My fascination with Jackie Robinson and by extension Branch

Rickey began many, many years ago.

When school was out in Brooklyn in the summer, I sometimes

went driving with my father in his taxi cab. One morning we were

driving in East Flatbush in Brooklyn down Snyder Avenue. My father

pointed to a dark red brick house with a high porch.

“I think Jackie Robinson lives there,” my father said. He parked

across the street. We got out of the cab, stood on the sidewalk and

looked at the house. Suddenly, the front door opened. A black man in

a short-sleeved shirt stepped out. I didn't believe it. Here we were on a

quiet street on a summer morning with no one else around.

The man was not wearing the baggy, ice-cream- white-uniform

of the Brooklyn Dodgers that accentuated his blackness. He was

dressed in regular clothes, coming out of a regular house in a regular

Brooklyn neighborhood, a guy like anyone else going out for a bottle

of milk and a newspaper.

Then, incredibly, he crossed the street and came right toward

me. Seeing that unmistakable pigeon-toed walk, the rock of the

shoulders and hips that I had seen so many times before on the

baseball field, I had no doubt who it was.

“Hi Jackie, I'm one of your biggest fans," I said self-

consciously. “Do you think the Dodgers are going to win the pennant

this year?”

"His handsome face looked sternly down at me.  “We'll try our

best,” he said.

“Good luck,” I said.”

“Thanks,” he replied.”

He put his big hand out, and I took it. We shook hands and I felt

the strength and firmness of his grip. I was a nervy kid, but I didn't ask

for an autograph or try to prolong the conversation. I just he walked

away down the street.

That memory stayed with me for a very long time. And as I

entered my sports book writing career I always thought of doing a

book about Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey. That book Rickey

and Robinson: the Men Who Broke Baseball’s Color Line was first

published in 1982.

For me, researching for and interviewing for and writing this

book was one of my most gratifying publishing experiences. So many

of those who were responsible for and witness to the breaking of the

color line in baseball were still around.

So on these pages you will hear Mack Robinson, Jackie’s

brother, who was so untrusting of a white author that he recorded me

recording him, Rachel Robinson, who was eloquent and gracious. The

wonderful Monte Irvin, who later wrote the foreword for another

edition of this book, was simply sublime, re-telling honestly what

those times were like. He said he could have never taken the abuse

Jackie Robinson had to take. “I would’ve not been able to be the first.

I would have smashed those bigots with my bat, my fist.”

Irving Rudd, a little man with big character and an even bigger

heart, was giving of his time and emotions and memories and played

back his role as public relations director of the old Brooklyn Dodgers

when Jackie Robinson was making history.

What is so wonderful about this time capsule of a book is that I

was able to reach out to those who lived “the breaking of the color

line.”

Their oral history makes each page relevant and significant.

They are all listed on the acknowledgments page.

Other books and films have come along since the first edition of

this book. However, most of them do not contain the primary research

and interviews I was able to secure in the early 1980s. That and the

special stories about a special time, I believe, make Rickey and

Robinson a special book, one of the favorites of all I have written.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Coming this fall:

http://www.frommerbooks.com/ultimate-yankees.html

--------------------------------------------------------------------
About the Author:   One of the most prolific and respected sports journalists and oral historians in the United States, author of the autobiographies of legends Nolan Ryan, Tony Dorsett, and Red Holzman, Dr. Harvey Frommer is an expert on the New York Yankees and has arguably written more books, articles and reviews on the New York Yankees than anyone.   In 2010, he was selected by the City of New York as an historical consultant for the re-imagined old Yankee Stadium site, Heritage Field. A professor in the MALS program at Dartmouth College, Frommer was dubbed “Dartmouth’s Mr. Baseball” by their alumni magazine.
His The Ultimate Yankee Book will be published fall 2017. Pre-order from Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Ultimate-Yankee-Book-Beginning-Today-Essential/dp/1624144330
“As a lifelong Yankees fan, I was devouring every last delicious new detail about my beloved Bronx Bombers in this fabulous new book.” —Ed Henry, author of 42 Faith: The Rest of the Jackie Robinson Story
Article is Copyright © 2017 by Harvey Frommer.  All rights reserved worldwide.

Frommer’s work: His work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, New York Daily News, Newsday, USA Today, Men’s Heath, The Sporting News, Bleacher Report and more