Thursday, December 13, 2007

And He Played Major League Baseball, Too??

Picture a baseball player conversing in Latin to a fellow player during a game.
Picture the same player(he was a catcher at the time)speaking Italian to the opposing batter, who happened to be Italian.
This athlete was the only major league player to have a tuxedo hung in his locker, due to a speaking engagement he would have after the game at some "think-tank" or university.
In Japan(he spoke Japanese fluently), he took pictures with a camera he had hidden underneath his kimono , of military installations in Tokyo - this was BEFORE Dec. 7, 1941, when Americans roamed through Japan as visitors. These photos were then given to American Intelligence for examination. It was thought that some of these pictures became of value to Jimmy Doolittle when in 1942, the legendary Doolittle raid on Tokyo took place.
In Germany(he spoke eloquent German)the Oss(the predecessor to the present CIA)of which this baseball player was an agent(!)had penetrated, by way of this athlete, the inner circle of scientists working on fission, and this catcher posed as a graduate student listening to Werner Heisenberg, Germany's most powerful physicist. This baseball player was there to determine the progress of Hitler's quest for the atomic bomb. It was this baseball player who discovered that we were far ahead of Hitler in the development of the Bomb. He actually had clearance from the OSS to assassinate Heisenberg if it was found that the Germans were ahead of us in the atomic project. Almost unbelievable, but true; the athlete had with him a handgun to do the job - and a capsule to commit suicide, if caught.
He knew Albert Einstein(imagine!), and on one occasion, Einstein said to him "It's sad to realize that you know more about the laws of physics than I know about baseball."
Interestingly, Heisenberg, after the war, remarked in discussion about this remarkable young man that he remembered him, primarily because of the quality of questions projected to Heisenberg concerning nuclear fission.
He graduated Cum Laude from Princeton, spoke at least seven languages, and appeared on radio talk shows demonstrating his enormous intellect, in anything from Indian poetry to the ancient Greeks.
On Opening Day in Washington, President Roosevelt tossed out the first ball, waved at this baseball player, and yelled, "Hi, Moe!" The player replied, "Hi, Mr. President". He had met the president some time before while working for the OSS.
His name was Moe Berg - look him up. He was quite an item.

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