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Baseball movie catcher11/22/2023 ![]() He was not a great hitter and was a slow baserunner, but he had a strong, accurate throwing arm and sound baseball instincts. Beginning in his sophomore year, he was the starting shortstop. ĭuring his freshman year, Berg played first base on an undefeated team. His Jewish heritage and modest finances combined to keep him on the fringes of Princeton social life, where he never quite fit in. He had studied seven languages: Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, and Sanskrit, studying with the philologist Harold H. Berg received a B.A., magna cum laude in modern languages. In 1919 he transferred to Princeton University and never again referred to having attended NYU for a year, presenting himself exclusively as a Princeton man. He spent two semesters there and also played baseball and basketball. ![]() Īfter graduating from Barringer, Berg enrolled in New York University. His father had wanted an environment with few Jews. Most of the other students were East Side Italian Catholics or Protestants from the Forest Hill neighborhood. Barringer was the first of a series of institutions where Berg's religion made him unusual at the time. During his senior season, the Newark Star-Eagle selected a nine-man "dream team" for 1918 from the city's best prep and public high school baseball players, and Berg was named the team's third baseman. In 1918, at the age of 16, Berg graduated from Barringer High School. īerg began playing baseball at the age of seven for the Roseville Methodist Episcopal Church baseball team under the pseudonym "Runt Wolfe". Roseville offered Bernard Berg everything he wanted in a neighborhood-good schools, middle-class residents, and few Jews. In 1910 the Berg family moved again, to the Roseville section of Newark. ![]() In 1906, Bernard Berg bought a pharmacy in West Newark and the family moved there. When Berg was three and a half, he begged his mother to let him start school. After the war, Berg was occasionally employed by the OSS's successor, the Central Intelligence Agency.īerg was the third and youngest child of Bernard Berg, a pharmacist who emigrated from Ukraine, and his wife Rose (née Tashker), a homemaker, both Jewish, who lived in the Harlem section of New York City, a few blocks from the Polo Grounds stadium. He was sent on a mission to Italy, where he interviewed various physicists concerning the German nuclear weapons program. Īs a spy working for the government of the United States, Berg traveled to Yugoslavia to gather intelligence on resistance groups which the U.S. His reputation as an intellectual was fueled by his successful appearances as a contestant on the radio quiz show Information Please, in which he answered questions about the etymology of words and names from Greek and Latin, historical events in Europe and the Far East, and ongoing international conferences. Ī graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School, Berg spoke several languages and regularly read ten newspapers a day. Although he played 15 seasons in the major leagues, almost entirely for four American League teams, Berg was never more than an average player and was better known for being "the brainiest guy in baseball." Casey Stengel once described Berg as "the strangest man ever to play baseball". Morris Berg (Ma– May 29, 1972) was an American catcher and coach in Major League Baseball, who later served as a spy for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II. September 1, 1939, for the Boston Red Sox
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