The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg

by Nicholas Dawidoff

When Linda McCarthy, the CIA museum curator, talks about Moe Berg, her face flushes sanguine and her conversation comes in breathless, staccato surges. Moe Berg is her passion. “People think I’m making him up,” she says. “I idolize Moe. He did it for the right reasons. He joined OSS with a purpose in mind. He knew he’d be useful to this country. He knew what the Germans were doing with the atomic bomb. That’s what intelligence is all about. You have to know what the other side’s doing. “As a ballplayer he was a gentleman,” continues McCarthy, who drives a utility vehicle—“for a utility catcher,” she says—adorned with MOE BERG license plates. “I admire Renaissance men. I’d love to sit down and talk with him. In the evening when I close up my museum, I go over and say good night to Moe. I think his spirit is here. I think I do know him.”