Sport: Catcher Unmasked

Radio fans two winters ago were astounded to hear a ballplayer guest-starring on Information Please. He hit safely on the following: the difference between poi, soy, loy, oy; the gist of the Bordereau letter; an outline of the Willy-Nicky correspondence; the names of this generation’s brightest comet, brightest planet, brightest satellite, brightest star.The ballplayer who made John Kieran look dumb was Morris (“Moe”) Berg, catcher-coach of the Boston Red Sox.

Beetle-browed, 38-year-old Moe Berg—Princeton ’23, Columbia Law School ’27 and the Sorbonne at one time or another—is indeed the antithesis of Ring Lardner’s celebrated boneheads. A charter member of the Linguistic Society of America, he speaks seven languages—excluding Brooklynese, which he picked up when, fresh from the Princeton campus and trying to hide his Phi Beta Kappa key, he played shortstop for the Dodgers.

Baseball’s No. 1 scholar is an authority on phonetics, philology, political philosophy and Romance languages. He is also an inventor (a lens for color photography), businessman (he acquired half-interest in a writing-paper firm by lending a friend his World Series bonus nine years ago) and lawyer (for several winters with the eminent Manhattan firm of Satterlee & Canfield).

Last week, after 19 years of baseball, during which he tried to conceal his intellectual background, Catcher Berg at last removed his mask. Quitting the game he loved even more than his books, Morris Berg, A.B., LL.D, accepted a Government appointment as roving envoy to Mexico and Central America—a good-will post created by the Office for Coordination of Commercial and Cultural Relations between the American Republics.