Berg didn’t bite, and the White Sox went to Shreveport without him. That didn’t mean that Berg was at peace with the situation. Up in New York, he was still struggling with the same indecision about professions that had been with him since his Princeton graduation. But now he felt he had come “to the cross roads,” as he said to Taylor Spink in 1939. “It apparently would have to be baseball or law. Which? I loved the game and hated to quit.” Berg hadn’t told any faculty members at Columbia about his summer job, and few students knew about it either. One day in May, his quandary resolved itself unexpectedly. He called on Professor Noel Dowling to discuss a lecture. Arriving at the professor’s office, Berg found Dowling reading the sports page and chuckling. “Great game, this baseball,” he said, looking up at Berg. “You ought to get interested in it.” Dowling told Berg that he’d played first base for Vanderbilt.
“Professor,” said Berg, “I played shortstop for Princeton.”
“Are you the Berg from Princeton?” asked Dowling. With that, out tumbled Berg’s dilemma. Dowling was sympathetic. He told Berg to take extra courses in the fall, and promised to help arrange with the dean a leave of absence from law school the following year, in February 1928.
Berg spent his first three months of the 1927 season with the team in the same way he’d spent them in 1926, seated on the bench watching Bill Hunnefield play shortstop. In August came serendipity. Ray Schalk had been the White Sox catcher since 1912, and even now, at age thirty-five, he still liked to play when his body was willing. He chose July 21 for one of his rare appearances, and he chose badly. Julie Wera of the Yankees scored only eight runs in his major league career, but one of them came that day, when he ran over Schalk, injuring the little Chicago manager in his rush to the plate.
The team’s regular catchers were Harry McCurdy and Buck Crouse. Crouse’s locker was next to Berg’s, and he liked to tease Berg about his weak hitting. “Moe,” he said once, “I don’t care how many of them damn degrees you got, they ain’t never learned you to hit the curve.” A few days after Schalk’s mishap, Crouse split a finger in Philadelphia. The team moved on to Boston with only McCurdy left. In the third inning of a game on August 5, Red Sox outfielder Cleo Carlyle, running as though it was his only season in the majors—which it was—collided with McCurdy. Schalk was out of catchers. As he despaired in the dugout, Schalk heard a low, measured voice say, “You’ve got a big league catcher sitting right here.”
It was Berg. He was referring to the husky backup first baseman Earl Sheely, who’d done some catching in the minor leagues, but Schalk didn’t know that. “All right, Berg, get in there,” he said. Dutifully, Berg began buckling on a chest protector and a pair of shin guards. Not only is it difficult to catch a baseball that is dipping and swerving at more than 90 miles an hour, for the unprepared it’s also dangerous. “If the worst happens,” Berg is supposed to have said, “kindly deliver the body to Newark.”
It didn’t. In his first game as a catcher since the Newark sandlots, Berg was terrific. The next day the team moved on to New York, where Schalk had a former Philadelphia Phillies catcher named Frank Bruggy on hand to meet the team. With Philadelphia, Bruggy had been known as “the Bruggy Boys,” because he was so obese there seemed to be two of him. Bruggy hadn’t caught in the majors since 1925 and the lack of exertion showed. He was fatter than ever. When Ted Lyons, scheduled to pitch against the Yankees, saw Bruggy, he told Schalk that he wasn’t throwing to him. Schalk asked him whom he’d like as catcher. “Moe Berg,” said Lyons.
Lyons was a future Hall of Famer, with an eclectic array of pitches. In his debut as a starting catcher, Berg would be contending with a brisk fastball, a darting curve, a knuckleball, and Babe Ruth. The 1927 Yankees were one of the strongest teams in baseball history. Led by Ruth, who would hit a record 60 home runs, they lost only 44 times. One of the losses came that day, as Lyons beat them 6–3, holding Ruth hitless. The defensive play of the game was made by, of all people, the novice catcher Moe Berg. With Chicago leading by one run in the fifth inning, Berg scooped up a poor throw from the outfield, spun, and tagged out New York third baseman Jumping Joe Dugan at the plate. Led by Lyons, the White Sox converged on their catching prodigy, shouting his name and clapping him on the back. “He went forward like a shortstop and picked up the half hop,” said Lyons admiringly. “He caught a wonderful game and handled himself like an old-timer.”
A few days later, Tribune columnist Westbrook Pegler recounted the unfolding events with glee. “The distinguished Corean philologist confessed that he was secretly a catcher all the time instead of a shortstop, as everyone thought him. He has been catching very nicely and Mr. Schalk feels faint stirrings of hope that some of his other players will confess to a secret accomplishment, preferably hitting. However, not to rely too strongly on a catcher who may only think he is a catcher, Mr. Schalk has engaged Mr. Frank Bruggy.” Bruggy never played an inning for Chicago. Crouse’s finger soon healed, and Berg caught eight more times in the last month and a half. He also amused himself by practicing his Spanish on long train rides with Carl Reynolds, a young outfielder from south Texas.
After the season, Berg returned to Columbia, while Schalk went off to Comiskey’s retreat in Jerome, Wisconsin. Among the topics of their conversation was catching. “The catching department is something of a problem,” reported Edward Burns in the Tribune. “At least one catcher who can flirt with .300 with his bat is needed.” Berg’s response was “Why not me?”
IF JOURNALISTS, CHARLES Comiskey, and perhaps some of his White Sox teammates, too, regarded Berg with a strand of enmity, it wasn’t surprising. Berg’s practice of skipping spring training and the first two months of the season left the impression that he felt he had better things to do than play baseball. Everything might have been tolerated had he played well when he did show up, but thus far Berg’s baseball career had been undistinguished. Comiskey was receiving very little for his investment.
Part of Berg’s problem was that the game had never seen anything like him. Baseball at the time was full of country boys—rubes from mid-Atlantic mill towns, Great Plains farm-boys, and hayseeds from the deep South. Baseball had always had its share of college men, too. Christy Mathewson had gone to Bucknell, Lou Gehrig to Columbia; Frankie Frisch was “the Fordham Flash”; Eddie Plank went to Gettysburg College, and Chief Meyers was a Dartmouth man. But then, as now, nobody had ever tried to manipulate the baseball season to accommodate an academic schedule.
There had been one other exception, a right-handed pitcher named George Davis. “Champ” or “Iron,” as Davis was called, was vice president of Williams College’s Class of 1912, a speedballing pitcher for the baseball team, and a Phi Beta Kappa graduate. On July 16 of the same year, he began pitching for the New York Highlanders. He was 1–4 for the team in ten games. Davis went to spring training in Cuba in 1913, but left to go home to get married. Fast and wild, he spent 1913 with Jersey City of the International League, striking out 199 batters in 208 innings and hitting 15 more. The Boston Braves brought him back to the majors for two games that summer. In 1914, he enrolled at Harvard Law School and missed spring training. He returned to the Braves with éclat, though, pitching a no-hitter against the Phillies on September 9 and helping the “Miracle Braves” to the pennant. It was a moment for any pitcher to savor, and especially so for Davis, who would win only five more professional baseball games. In 1915, law school again kept him in Cambridge through spring training, and after he received his LL.B. from Harvard in 1916, he became a full-time lawyer in Buffalo, where he learned to read seven foreign languages and became an accomplished amateur astronomer. His four-year major league record was 7–10.
Even Berg’s most grudging critics had to admire the gumption he’d shown in offering himself to Schalk during the White Sox catching crisis. Berg came to regard that day as a splendid turn of chance. Catching, he decided, was his calling, something worth postponing a law school diploma for. On February 15, 1928, Berg received a letter
from John Grant, in the Columbia law school dean’s office, securing him a leave of absence for the balance of the year. For the first time, Berg was allowing baseball’s schedule to crowd his scholastic ambitions. Now he had a month and a half to learn the refinements of catching.
Three weeks before he was due at Shreveport for spring training, Berg traveled to a lumber camp in New York’s Adirondack Mountains. Strenuous labor there tapered him into the best physical condition of his life. He awakened each morning at five and spent part of the day felling timber, sawing it into logs, and loading the logs onto sleds. Afterward, he took long runs through the sugar maple and yellow birch forests and sparred indoors. He reported to Shreveport on March 2, looking supple and fit to Edward Burns of the Tribune: “Moe Berg, who is allaying culture with his passion to become a catcher, arrived this morning as per schedule.… Moe being one of those lucky skinny devils who doesn’t have to worry about his victuals, reported in good physical condition, except that the bottoms of his feet are tender as a result of sitting around in libraries all winter.”
Shortstop Berg had always been too slow. Catchers, though, are notorious for trudging around the base paths, and Berg fit the essential criteria for the position: nimble reflexes, a strong arm, soft hands, and brains. In his crouch he looked the part too, balanced solid on his feet, angled slightly forward toward his pitcher, glove arm parallel to his thighs and thrust straight out beyond them—a firm, attractive target. The White Sox never did trade for a catcher. Crouse, McCurdy, and Berg were to share the position.
By May, the team had fallen to last place. On July 4, Schalk resigned, and Lena Blackburne became the new manager. To this point Berg hadn’t caught much, but pitchers like Alphonse “Tommy” Thomas and especially Lyons liked the way he handled himself at the position and began to request him. He was becoming a pesky hitter, too, keeping his batting average above .300 into September, when it dipped to .246. By City Series time, the White Sox had rebounded to fifth in the eight-team league, and Berg had established himself as their starting catcher.
Previewing the City Series, Burns wrote a piece comparing Cubs catcher Gabby Hartnett, a future Hall of Famer, with Berg. Hartnett, he said, was the harder hitter, but both “are nifty dressers and single. They are deadly on high foul flies and throwing to second … the big difference between the two boys is that Hartnett drives one of the most costly of domestic cars, while Berg still clings to his boyish love for the bicycle. He can be seen riding every morning rain or shine in the vicinity of 53rd Street and Hyde Park Boulevard. Berg speaks from seven to twenty-one languages, while Gabby speaks but one—rock ribbed New England.” The press was warming up to him, and why not? On a bad team, a witty man of broad interests made for a nice traveling companion and, more important, good rainy-day copy. The Cubs won the City Series 4–3, no thanks to Berg, who caught every game and batted .333.
Berg was by no means a famous player, but to Chicago’s Jewish fans, his presence in the lineup was important. The largest Jewish diaspora from Eastern Europe to the U.S. had taken place around the turn of the century, meaning that American cities were now teeming with recent immigrants looking for a means of assimilation. For many, the National Pastime was perfect for the purpose. By absorbing the jargon, learning the rituals, adopting a team, and cheering along with a boisterous hometown crowd, men speaking heavily accented English began to feel a part of things. The paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould recalls, “My grandfather says he acclimated to this country through baseball,” and Horace Bresler, a baseball enthusiast who grew up outside New York City, says his father had a similar experience. “My dad came from Russia to New York when he was seven and grew up in the Bronx. He had two passions in life. One was opera, one was baseball. He was inclined to be refined, but when he could bring the conversation around to baseball, he was delighted. The assimilation is very important. I think baseball gives a lot of people who feel obscure a feeling of identity and belonging in a new place. The games always start with the national anthem. Baseball eased my father’s entry into this country.”
So enthusiastic were some Jewish White Sox fans about Berg that they tried to ply him with money. Earlier in the summer, pitcher Red Faber, playing his fifteenth season for the White Sox, had been honored with a “Day” by fans who presented him with $792. Clamoring for a “Berg Day,” Chicago fans raised a staggering $25,000, only to have it turned down by Berg, who explained, “I’ve done nothing to merit it and besides, it would be an affront to a great player like Faber.”
The same year in New York, where over a million Jews lived, McGraw finally found the Jewish player he’d long coveted for the Giants. Second baseman Andy Cohen was so popular with Jewish fans that the Giants hired a secretary to sort through his mail, poems were published in his name, the Jewish Daily Forward printed accounts of his play on the front page, and vendors at the Polo Grounds were instructed to bellow “Get your ice-cream Cohens here!” After the Yankees watched this go on for a summer, in October 1928 they were rumored to have proposed a trade with Chicago for Berg.
At law school in the fall there was trouble. Possibly it was the strain of concentrating a year’s work into one semester, but whatever the explanation, Berg failed evidence and did not graduate with the Class of 1929, although he did pass the New York State bar exam later that spring. He was nonplussed in late February, when the White Sox traded outfielder Bibb Falk to Cleveland for catcher Chick Autrey. Autrey and Crouse shared the catching into early June. In seventh place on June 5, Chicago lost to last-place Boston 17–2, prompting Irving Vaughan to rage in the Tribune, “The White Sox are no longer comical, they are pathetic.” Berg caught the next day, had two hits, and threw out two base runners. He had two more hits two days later, then three, and three more. Suddenly, he was a regular American League catcher again.
Good catchers have always been rare in baseball, but on a seventh-place team, a swallowtail jacket and a bad temper can be more interesting than a steady bat and a strong arm. Chicago’s first baseman in 1929 was a twenty-one-year-old cotton-haired terror from Waxahachie, Texas, named Art Shires. That summer it was Shires, or the “Great Shires,” as he insisted upon being addressed, and not Moe Berg who was the talk of Chicago. Shires was suspended following a gin-soaked spring training evening, which he brought to an unfortunate denouement when he whacked Manager Blackburne in the eye. There was, as John Kieran put it, “grave suspicion that [Shires] was a ballplayer,” however, and with the paucity of such species in Chicago, Shires was portrayed as an ingenue, a victim of the demon gin, and all was forgiven.
When sober, Shires was a whimsical slugger, the only .300 hitter in the league who came to the ballpark turned out in spats, green and white striped pantaloons, a green jacket with pearl buttons, a walking stick in his hand, and a silk top hat nestled on his curls. In July, Shires began writing poetry, or “pomes,” as he called them. The first announced, “They is a ballplayer / He is The Great Shires / Which he can paste the old apple / Whenever he tries.” “It ain’t such a hell of a pome anyhow,” critiqued the author, “but it’s a pipe I can clout better when I try than when I’m tired. Anyhow a writer told me poetry don’t have to rhyme.” Only when Shires read more in the newspapers about Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig than about himself did he resort to rhyme: “You may rave about Babe, / You may rave about Lou, / Why be so snooty? / The Great Shires is good too.” He was endearing, and during a summer when Tribune articles began “Wanted: Some Hits,” a hit he was.
Berg’s finest season progressed without many superlatives, but on September 7 he made headlines for, of all things, stupidity. In the fifth inning of a game Tommy Thomas was pitching against Washington, a runner was on third with the score tied at one when the batter hit a foul pop-up. Berg circled back, caught the ball, flicked it toward the mound, and began trotting toward the dugout. But that made only two outs, not three, and the delighted Washington runner scampered home to score what proved to be the winning run. After that, Thomas never tired of te
lling Berg, “You can speak a dozen languages but you can’t count to three.”
Eight days later, on the fourteenth floor of the Benjamin Franklin Hotel in Philadelphia, Manager Blackburne discovered Shires holed up in his room with a flask of gin. Shires reacted poorly to the intrusion and lowered his head. It took four men to subdue him. Blackburne got the worst of it. Shires bit the manager’s finger, punched him in the eye again, and tore up his hat. He was suspended indefinitely. While across town the Cubs were winning the National League pennant, the White Sox were seventh in the American League and “a sick ball club” according to Comiskey. Three hundred people came to watch their final game against Detroit. Berg batted .288 for the season, and if that still wasn’t quite on the rarefied level of Bill Dickey of the Yankees or of Mickey Cochrane of the Athletics, Berg was their peer defensively. Besides rarely making an error and putting a tremble in base stealers with his throwing arm, Berg was a clever caller of pitches and something of a psychologist. “He could make you believe you were the greatest pitcher in the world that day,” said Tommy Thomas.
The Catcher Was a Spy Page 6
