I first heard of Moe Berg, the only known person to play major league baseball and work for the OSS, through Mightygodking's "Reasons I Should Write Dr. Strange" series. So finding a biography of the man, even years later, was an immediate buy.
Dawidoff starts with Berg's father, who left the Ukraine to come to the United States, partially in search of prosperity, but also apparently to escape a place that was entirely governed by Judaism. Then Berg's childhood, where Moe demanded to attend school like his sister and brother when he was only three, and college. Which is where some of the peculiarities emerge, as Berg attended New York University for a year before getting into Princeton, but from then on, never mentioned that year. Much as he never mentioned it took him an extra year to complete his law degree at Columbia University in the late '20s (albeit, a course of study conducted around his playing baseball.)
Berg didn't actually play much, despite being in the majors for 15 seasons, so much of those years are devoted to what he did the rest of the time. Reading newspapers, reading books about languages, traveling in the off-season to Paris or Japan. From there, it's into Berg's wartime service, including meeting and speaking with Italian physicists to try and get a line on how far along the Nazis might be in building an atomic bomb. That culminates in Berg attending a physics lecture in Zurich by Heisenberg, where Berg was to kill the scientist if it sounded like Germany was close to a breakthrough.
Maybe the most interesting part is what comes after the war, which is to say, largely nothing. Berg continues to travel and read, but without any sort of central pillar for any of it to revolve around. There's no baseball season taking him around the country, no spy missions taking him to Europe or other countries (minus a couple of exceptions in the '50s). It's a life a drift, and Dawidoff takes a different approach. Rather than going chronologically, he breaks the 100-page chapter into sections by cities, then details what Berg got up to there. Or more accurately, who he temporarily moved in with as Berg travels almost constantly, moving in with one person or the other for sometimes weeks.
Dawidoff apparently had access to a lot of Berg's personal papers, in addition to many interviews with other people (because sportswriters loved to talk to and write about Berg, so no shortage of copy there). The picture he paints is of a guy who liked to be the center of attention, but on his terms, so he played mysterious. He would see an old acquaintance on the street, and if they asked what was happening, he would put a finger to his lips. Berg might not have anything going on, but he wanted people to think he did. He would arrive in town, call someone and expect to be treated to dinner and possibly allowed to live with them. Then he might just up and vanish, not heard from for years or ever.Moe wanted to be noticed, but not imposed upon. Depending on who's interviewed, Berg was either excellent at listening and learning about others, or only interested in talking about himself (again, only in very particular ways.)
It's hard to tell from that if Berg was happy, however one might define that. Some of the notes he kept would suggest no, but that he wasn't able or willing to change. Certainly in the '50s he didn't want to work because he kept thinking the CIA would call. At least one agent points out Berg's tendency to draw attention to himself by acting mysterious was exactly the wrong one for a spy. You're supposed to blend in and move unnoticed, which Berg was capable of when he chose, he just didn't always choose it.
Also, Alan Dulles didn't really get along with Berg when they met in Bern during WWII, which hurts the odds he'd tap him for a job. Count that as a point in favor of Berg's character. Dawidoff is far too kind to that Nazi-shielding shitbag Dulles.
The family situation Dawidoff paints is likewise a bit sad. Berg and his father never seem to have seen eye-to-eye, his dad contemptuous of Berg being a "sports" rather than some respectable position. His brother resented Berg being the favorite anyway, and Berg's brother and sister apparently hated each others' guts, although no answer is available as to why. None of them marry, none of them have kids, there's no reconciliation before their deaths.
'What to make of this lawyer who wasn't working on Wall Street, this linguist who wasn't teaching at Princeton, this ballplayer who didn't seem interested in playing ball? With Berg, potential was a red herring.'
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