9 “Movius Berg”: John Drohan, Boston Traveler, May 23, 1935.
10 “Berg spent his”: Frank Yeutter, Philadelphia Bulletin, December 17, 1938.
11 “In a column”: Joe Williams, New York World Telegram. Please note that a great many newspaper articles about Berg were saved by Berg himself. They were clipped in such a way that often complete identification for purposes of attribution is impossible.
12 “Cajoling the”: Francis Stann, Washington Star.
13 “When, for instance”: United Press International, Newark News, May 22, 1966.
Chapter 2. Youth: Runt Wolfe
1 “When Bernard Berg”: Interviews with Irwin Berg in New York and Elizabeth Shames in Portland, Maine, informed this discussion of Berg’s youth.
2 “In New York”: Looking through period photographs of the neighborhood that are in the collection of the New York Public Library informed the discussion of Ludlow Street.
3 “When Rose joined”: Samuel Berg letter of January 4, 1979, and Bernard Berg’s Newark News obituary, January 14, 1942.
4 “Once he was”: Interviews with Irwin Berg, New York; Elizabeth Shames, Portland, Maine; and Eugenia O’Connor by telephone informed this discussion of Bernard Berg’s feelings about religion.
5 Discussion of Moe Berg’s early life informed by Samuel Berg papers and My Brother Morris Berg, by Ethel Berg.
6 “The city of Newark”: Frank John Urquhart, A History of the City of Newark, New Jersey, p. 830.
7 “Between 1870 and”: Newark Board of Trade, Newark, the City of Industry, p. 15.
8 “to marvel in”: Urquhart, p. 825.
9 “The Germans and”: Ibid., pp. 827–30. See also Philip Roth, “The Man in the Middle,” New York Times, October 12, 1992.
10 “Here the natives”: Newark Board of Trade, p. 18.
11 “Antebellum Newark”: Urquhart, p. 827. See also Barbara Cunningham, ed., The New Jersey Ethnic Experience, pp. 304–8; John T. Cunningham, Newark, pp. 201–84; and Arnold S. Rice, ed., Newark, pp. 86–92.
12 “It was also a”: Barbara Cunningham, p. 244.
13 Description of Berg’s Newark was informed by Sam Berg’s papers and by telephone interviews with Eugenia O’Connor and Robert Wallace.
14 “The report cards”: Robert Slater, Great Jews in Sports, pp. 31–34.
15 “He tried”: Sam Berg, January 4, 1979.
16 “Moe usually”: Ibid. 25. “The famous old”: Ibid.
17 “His father, who”: Interview by telephone with William Moskowitz.
18 “A coal chute”: Ethel Berg, p. 8.
19 “In an article”: Newark Eagle, month and day illegible, 1918.
20 “Moe saw”: Interview by telephone with Hannah Litzky.
21 “There were no”: Sam Berg papers.
22 “Following his father”: Sam Berg to Elizabeth Shames, December 21, 1985.
23 “We did not”: Sam Berg to Louis Jacobson, May 14, 1989.
24 “Moe Berg generally made”: Unidentified (publication illegible) clipping provided to me by Louis Jacobson.
Other valuable sources of information for this chapter were interviews with Charles Cummings, Newark; Margaret Gahan by telephone; Helen and William Klein, New York; Craig and Dorothy Miller, Cranford, N.J.; Charles Owen, Washington, D.C.; Ted Sanger, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Clare Hall Smith, Washington, D.C.
Chapter 3. The Stiff Collar
1 “It was a”: Nassau Herald, 1923, p. 32.
2 “Yet when Jimmy”: Interview with Jimmy Breslin, New York.
3 “The shortstop on”: Princeton transcript courtesy of Lou Jacobson.
4 “After graduating from”: Interview with Patricia DeJohn, New York University.
5 “The isolation and”: Especially helpful to me in writing about Berg’s Princeton were Donald Griffin and Howard F. Baer and information provided by Rick Ryan of the alumni office.
6 “I’d say he”: From Jiro Hirano et al., The Spy Who Loved Japan.
7 “Howard Baer, a”: Interview by telephone with Howard F. Baer.
8 “After graduation, when”: Lou Jacobson’s interview with Donald Griffin, Princeton, New Jersey.
9 “lazy and good looking”: Arthur Mizener, The Far Side of Paradise, pp. 34 and 38.
10 “Berg’s situation was”: Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises, p. 4.
11 “No one had”: Hemingway, p. 4.
12 “Berg was the”: Louis Kaufman et al., Moe Berg, p. 49; interview with Elizabeth Shames; Ethel Berg, p. 14. See also “Princeton Sting to Jews Is Gone,” The Jewish Week-American Examiner, December 3, 1978.
13 “He was not”: Donald Griffin interview.
14 “He didn’t enroll”: Moe Berg, October 17, 1921. 32. “As a junior”: Moe Berg, undated letter.
15 “I am a great”: Ibid.
16 “I’m feeling fine”: Moe Berg, October 17, 1921.
17 “Berg’s letters home”: Moe Berg, undated letter, and ibid.
18 “Bill ‘Boileryard’ Clarke”: Super sports feature on Bill Clarke, Princeton athletic files, February 17, 1957.
19 “wearing snowshoes”: Madeleine Blais, unidentified news article from Princeton alumni files.
20 “Grimes returned to”: Donald Honig, A Donald Honig Reader, p. 588.
21 “When an opposing runner”: Kaufman, p. 46.
22 “To him baseball”: Berg uses these terms in a speech he gave at Meiji University in Tokyo, Japan, in November 1934. Text courtesy of Lou Jacobson.
23 “Like Cohn, Berg”: Hemingway, p. 3.
24 “During vacations”: Kaufman, p. 42.
25 “Berg wrote to his”: Moe Berg, July 26, 1921.
26 “Happy as he”: Interview with Monroe Karasik, Chevy Chase, Maryland.
27 “Berg to Pass”: Newark News, June 16, 1923.
28 “He’d been voted”: Nassau Herald, 1923, pp. 387–402.
29 “The next day”: Edmund Robbins to Moe Berg, June 27, 1923.
30 “The modern languages department”: Interviews with Ted Sanger and Robert Wallace.
31 “New York City had”: Ron Berler, “Let’s Hear It for the Rabbi of Swat,” Sports Illustrated, October 21, 1991.
32 “The shrewd manager”: Ibid.
33 “Berg was hesitant”: Arthur Daley, New York Times, June 1, 1972.
34 “The check they”: Unidentified clipping from the Moe Berg papers.
Other valuable sources of information for this chapter were interviews with Richard Edie by telephone; Larry Merchant by telephone; and Richard F. S. Starr by telephone.
Chapter 4. Robin in Paris
1 “On June 27”: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 27, 1923, p. 1; Brooklyn Citizen, June 27, 1923, p. 1.
2 “Moe Berg Impresses”: Brooklyn Daily Eagle and Brooklyn Citizen, June 28, 1923.
3 “In assessing Berg”: Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 28, 1923.
4 “to accumulate jack”: Ibid.
5 “He has noted”: Newark News, June 28, 1923.
6 “On July 27”: Jewish Tribune, July 27, 1923.
7 “McGraw revealed”: Ibid.
8 “The truth of it”: In September, McGraw’s quest finally ended in Hutchinson, Kansas, where one Mose Solomon was discovered thriving in the local outfield. The son of a Columbus, Ohio, Jewish junk dealer, Solomon was a short, thick-waisted outfielder who had pounded out 49 home runs that summer for the Class C Hutchinson Wheat Shockers. Local fans said that Solomon couldn’t catch a cold, much less a baseball, but McGraw put him on a train to New York anyway. With much fanfare, he introduced Solomon to the press as “The Rabbi of Swat,” and then quietly sat him down on the Giants bench, where he languished. Solomon was inundated with dinner invitations from prominent New York Jewish families, but he batted only eight times in the major leagues.
9 “Although Brooklyn was”: Samuel P. Abelow, A History of Brooklyn Jewry, p. 13.
10 “With Brooklyn wallowing”: Sam Berg to Lou Jacobson; Shames interview; interview by telephone with Charl
ie Segar.
11 “The poor throwing”: Brooklyn Eagle, August 17, 1923.
12 “Language study was”: Berg to George Weinstock, December 10, 1923.
13 “Within a week”: Berg, November 5, 1923. 43. “Just to walk”: Ibid.
14 “I go in like”: Berg, December 2, 1923.
15 “No matter how national”: Berg, December 8, 1923.
16 “John McGraw said”: Berg, December 2, 1923.
17 “They charged him”: Berg, January 17, 1924. See also Charles Alexander, John McGraw, p. 253.
18 “McGraw asked Berg”: Berg, January 17, 1924.
19 “Who ever heard”: Newark News, December 28, 1923.
20 “For the 32 francs”: Berg, December 2, 1923.
21 “I don’t let”: Ibid.
22 “I’ll tell the professor”: Berg, December 9, 1923.
23 “Naturally the ideal”: Berg, December 8, 1923.
24 “No matter how well”: Berg, January 17, 1924.
25 “nickel-squeezers”: Berg, December 8, 1923.
26 “dirty faces”: Berg, December 2, 1923.
27 “there’d be a riot”: Berg, January 17, 1924.
28 “The women have”: Berg, December 10, 1923.
29 “The French musical”: Berg, December 8, 1923.
30 “I have been accosted”: Ibid.
31 “a flock of”: Berg, December 15, 1923.
32 “Well, pretty soon”: Berg, January 17, 1923.
Other valuable information for this chapter was provided to me in an interview with William Klein, New York, and in Berg’s notes in the Moe Berg papers.
Chapter 5. Good Field, No Hit
1 “Joe Cascarella was”: Interview by telephone with Joe Cascarella.
2 “In 1933, Roberts was”: Interview by telephone with Diane Roberts.
3 “As Berg sailed home”: Newark News, undated 1924 clipping from Berg papers.
4 “His tardy appearance”: See 1924 issues of the Minneapolis Morning Tribune for Millers information.
5 “Perverts, Berg called”: Berg, undated letter.
6 “the 1924 Mud Hens”: See 1924 issues of the Toledo News Bee for Mud Hens information.
7 “The Affirmative Particles”: Romanic Review, vol. 16, no. 2 (April-June 1925), p. 191.
8 “the Great Moe”: Newark News, May 12, 1925. 51. “a revelation”: Ibid.
9 “the whole show”: Reading Eagle, May 22, 1925.
10 “the brilliant young”: Reading Eagle, May 24, 1925.
11 “has been pickling”: Reading Eagle, July 22, 1925.
12 “a disastrous afternoon”: Reading Eagle, June 11, 1925.
13 “the best double-play artists”: Reading Eagle, July 18, 1925.
14 “This was such an unusual”: Newark News, August 10, 1925.
15 “They took him more”: Ibid., February 20, 1926, and April 3, 1926.
16 “And what would I”: Ibid., April 12, 1939.
17 “Berg ‘was intent,’ “: Chicago Tribune, March 6, 1926.
18 “I have always considered”: Ethel Berg, p. 31.
19 “lost because of”: Chicago Tribune, September 5, 1926.
20 “Moe Berg isn’t much”: Chicago Tribune, clipping date illegible, 1926; and Boston Evening Globe, July 9, 1937.
21 “My Dear Young Man”: Ethel Berg, p. 29.
22 “A player reporting”: Ibid., p. 30.
23 “Up in New York”: From Spink, “Three and One,” Sporting News, November 16, 1939.
24 “ ‘Moe,’ he said once”: Sporting News, June 17, 1972.
25 “A few days after”: There are many accounts of this famous story. Using those from the Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1927; Sporting News, November 16, 1939; Washington Post, March 13, 1932; and Kaufman, p. 62, I pieced together the correct sequence of events.
26 “kindly deliver the body”: Kaufman, p. 62.
27 “With Philadelphia, Bruggy”: Chicago Tribune, August 9, 1927.
28 “He went forward”: Ted Lyons to Charles Owen.
29 “The distinguished Corean”: Chicago Tribune, August 9, 1927.
30 “He also amused himself”: Chicago Daily News, September 7, 1927.
31 “Part of Berg’s”: The best account of the early days of baseball remains Lawrence Ritter’s The Glory of Their Times.
32 “There had been”: Joseph Overfield is the world’s George Davis authority. See his “The Other George Davis,” in the 1989 Baseball Research Journal, pp. 33–35. I also interviewed Overfield by telephone.
33 “a full-time lawyer”: Davis worked as a lawyer for more than forty years, and he loathed his work. Astronomy is what interested him. His library contained a powerful telescope and a collection of 1,500 astronomy texts in French, Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Persian, and German. He never claimed fluency in these languages, but taught himself to read them well enough so that he could understand the books. In his spare time he lectured on astronomy at the University of Buffalo, was a member of the American and Royal Astronomical societies, published articles, and began a two-volume history of constellations. In 1960, Davis finally retired as a lawyer and set out to finish his book. He never did. Five months later, after a stock market slump cost him a large sum of money, he hanged himself.
34 “On February 15”: Ethel Berg, p. 31.
35 “Afterward, he took”: Newark News, February 1928; otherwise undated clipping.
36 “By May, the team”: Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1928.
37 “Berg speaks from”: Ibid., September 29, 1928.
38 “For many, the National”: Interviews by telephone with Horace Bresler and Stephen Jay Gould; letters from Gould, Lester Rodney, and Melville Shapiro; and Peter Levine’s book Ellis Island to Ebbets Field were all especially helpful in constructing this section.
39 “The paleontologist”: Telephone interviews with Bresler and Gould.
40 “I’ve done nothing”: New York World Telegram, March 11, 1940; Newark Star Eagle, March 20, 1939; and Tommy Thomas interview in the Japanese film The Spy Who Loved Japan.
41 “The same year”: Levine, pp. 112–16.
42 “In seventh place”: Chicago Tribune, June 6, 1929.
43 “There was, as John”: Quoted in an otherwise unidentified article by Harry T. Brundidge, in Berg’s National Baseball Library file.
44 “The first announced”: Chicago Tribune, July 30, 1929. See also Shires file in the National Baseball Library.
45 “After that, Thomas”: The Spy Who Loved Japan.
46 “Eight days later”: Chicago Tribune, September 16, 1929, and June 17, 1930. See also the National Baseball Library file.
47 “While across town”: Chicago Tribune, September 17, 1929.
48 “He could make”: The Spy Who Loved Japan. Fred J. Bendel column, Newark News, October 11, 1929.
49 “In New York”: Newark News, undated spring 1930 dispatch.
50 “Berg smiled, turned”: Interview with Charles Owen, Washington, D.C.
51 “many baseball players”: Interview with Shirley Povich, Washington, D.C.
Chapter 6. You Never Knew He Was Around
1 “On May 2”: Chicago Tribune, May 2, 1930.
2 “The nuns gathered”: Kaufman, p. 73.
3 “The itinerary included”: Ibid., and Ethel Berg, pp. 83–84.
4 “Only in October”: Ralph Kelly’s April 16, 1931, article on the subject in an unidentified Cleveland newspaper makes it clear that Berg went to Satterlee and Canfield after he’d both graduated and passed the bar. It is, of course, possible that Berg misled Kelly. Bob Callagy of the firm was helpful to me in the construction of this section.
5 “In April 1931”: Ralph Kelly, April 16, 1931.
6 “Thereupon he”: Gerry Moore, unidentified clipping from Berg file. See also Murray Strober’s medical history, May 27, 1972.
7 “Berg had one hit”: Interview with June McElroy, Washington, D.C.
8 “It was a thoroughly”: Interview with Willis Hudlin by telephone.
9 “After luring Berg”: Interview with Larry Rosenthal, Boston.
10 “ ‘Moe,’ Wagner told him”: Interview with Charlie Wagner by telephone.
11 “As to why”: Interview with Jimmy Breslin, New York.
12 “When he’d finished”: Interview with Boze Berger by telephone.
13 “The train would pull”: Interview with Monroe Karasik, Washington, D.C.; Ted Williams, Boston; and Edward Bernstein, Boston.
14 “No, Al”: Interview with Bernie Levy by telephone.
15 “In one trunk”: Interview with Mildred Cronin by telephone.
16 “You never saw”: Interview with Shirley Povich, Washington, D.C.
17 “The game ended”: Interviews with Billy Werber and Jack Wilson by telephone.
18 “The Indians gave”: Washington Post, March 10, 1932.
19 “That said, Povich”: Morrie Siegel interview by telephone.
20 “On March 13”: Washington Post, March 14, 1932.
21 “I wish less attention”: American Mercury, May 1940. 73. “Too much has”: F. C. Lane, in Baseball Magazine, unidentified clipping from Berg’s National Baseball Library file.
22 “I don’t suppose”: Ethel Berg, p. 36.
23 “The minute he learned”: Unidentified clipping from Berg file.
24 “You kept me”: This letter appears in Ethel Berg, p. 308.
25 “I was fascinated”: Interview with Shirley Povich, Washington, D.C.
26 “I would say that”: American Mercury, May 1940.
Chapter 7. Strange Foreigner with Camera
1 “A few occasions”: An interview with Professor Masaru Ikei in New York was helpful in constructing this section, as was his manuscript “Double Play: Baseball in U.S.–Japanese Relations.”
2 “By the time”: Berg letter, October 11, 1932.
3 “They tell me”: Ibid.
4 “Berg spent a”: Ethel Berg and Newark News, April 12, 1939.
5 “On October 20”: Berg kept a great deal of information about his trips to Japan in his boxes. His brother and sister sent that material to the Columbia law school library, New York Public Library, Newark Public Library, and Charles Owen.
6 “I have never”: Berg letter, November 9, 1932.
The Catcher Was a Spy Page 38