The Spy Behind Home Plate: The Real Story Of Moe Berg, Major League Baseball Player Turned WWII Spy (9/10)

by Tony Medley

Runtime 98 minutes

NR

Most of today’s baseball fans have never heard of Moe Berg. He was a “good field-no hit” catcher who played in the major leagues in the 1920s & 30s. Those who have probably are influenced by the name Moe and immediately identify him with the Three Stooges, Moe, Larry, and Curly. His name and profession, however, hid a man nothing like that. This film reveals who he was and what he did, and it is like a light going on over one’s head.

The only thing right about what I thought was that he was, indeed, a good field-no hit catcher. I knew also that he spoke 12 languages. That was it. In fact, that was only a small part of who he has.

A graduate of Princeton (one of the few, if not the only, Jewish students there) and Columbia Law School, for most of those who knew him they felt he was the smartest person they ever knew. He probably could have been anything he wanted to be. But what he wanted to be was a baseball player, greatly disappointing his father who never came to see him play.

World events, however, thrust him into situations in which he could use his talents. During the 1934 major league baseball tour of Japan he was on the team that included Babe Ruth, Lew Gehrig, and other greats of the game. While in Japan, he took his camera and filmed many things that were later forbidden to photograph and gave the information to the American government. The film includes some of the film shot by Berg (along with films shot by Yankee Pitcher Lefty Gomez and Jimmie Foxx).

When World War II was in full bloom Bill Donovan recruited him into the OSS and he was sent to Italy to try to find locations of German scientists who were trying to develop an atomic bomb.

Because he was so proficient in languages and due to his outgoing personality he found one Italian scientist named Gian Carlo Wick. Wick revealed to Moe where German atomic scientist Werner Heisenberg was, in a small southern German town that was protected from observation and bombing. One man is quoted saying, “To me, Moe hit a home run right there. We had been trying for six months to tie down where these scientists were. Because we knew that once we located them, we’d locate their Los Alamos.” Berg got this information in one day. The film tells of other dangerous, indeed life-threatening, missions Berg performed.

The film covers Moe’s relationships with people like Donovan, who founded the OSS, and Ian Fleming, who was a British intelligence officer before writing his James Bond novels, and Antonio Ferri, a key Italian scientist who had priceless documents about the German effort to make the A-Bomb.

He was a panelist on the nationally syndicated radio show “Information Please” three times and was never stumped. As an example of his knowledge, he could name the 12 gods and goddesses in Greek and Latin off the top of his head. Moe had a law degree. As a condition of his appearance on the show he refused to be asked a question about law because he didn’t want to appear to be unknowledgable in his profession. When they once did ask such a question, he never appeared again.

I have two main criticisms of this fascinating documentary. First is that it suffers from the same defect that afflicts many documentaries in that some people interviewed are identified by captions and others aren’t. Some are ID’d each time they appear; others aren’t. Viewers don’t always remember who these people are. Every documentary should include captions throughout the film identifying each person interviewed.

The second is that writer/producer/director Aviva Kempner closes with a political dedication that reads:

Dedicated to

Statehood and voting rights for DC

Changing the Name of the Washington Football team

Tighter gun control laws and immigration reform

Viability of newspapers

Written produced and directed by Aviva Kempner

Kempner should keep her politics out of it because at least half of the people who view the film will find these positions antithetical, a sock in the face after such a fine tribute to a unique man. When she closes the film with these irrelevant positions, she dilutes the effect the film might have on its audience and it serves as a disservice to Moe Berg.