Quick Takes

    Nine Cincinnati Bengals have been arrested in the last nine months. I may be off one or two; I haven't checked this week. The Bengals should consider holding free agent tryouts at the Cincinnati city jail.

    Pro athletes are often criticized for being disloyal to the teams that feed them their big bucks. But do coaches set any better an example? I can think of a few who were both disloyal and deceptive:

    Butch Davis recruited players to the U. of Miami, and then left for the Cleveland Browns in 2001 after he assured his new recruits he would remain.

    Jim Mora spoke of wanting the U. of Washington job while his Atlanta Falcons were still in the playoff hunt this year (then stating he didn’t mean it), forcing Atlanta to rightfully terminate him after a forgettable tenure there.

    Nick Saban waxed poetic about “I’m not going to be the Alabama coach” a week before he bolted from the Miami Dolphins for 'Bama last month.

    Bobby Petrino stated he would honor his contract and stay put in Louisville, but shortly thereafter, he agreed to coach the Falcons.

    After four miserable seasons, Al Davis knew the Oakland Raiders needed a fresh start. He couldn't have found a new coach much more fresh than Lane Kiffin. Davis hired the 31-year-old Kiffin last week, putting the former USC offensive coordinator in charge of restoring his “commitment to excellence” to the once-proud Raiders, 2-14 in 2006. Kiffin became the NFL's youngest head coach. The only Raiders younger than Kiffin are the cheerleaders. How lucky he is; he gets to deal with those pro flakes and Al Davis.

    I’m preparing myself for sports boredom after Sunday. I’m not into the NBA or the NHL full-throttle yet. Those are playoff sports. March Madness comes first.

Story of the Week

MOE BERG

    Thanks to Lewis Bettman for reminding me of this incredible man. Moe Berg is a most unique human interest story that just happens to tie into sports.

From:  The American Jewish Historical Society

    Moe Berg’s life proves the adage that "truth is often stranger than fiction." One of the best educated, intellectually accomplished and patriotic Jewish athletes in the history of American sports, Berg got his start in baseball in 1906, at the age of four, playing catch with the beat policeman in front of his father’s Newark, NJ, pharmacy. Berg became an excellent linguist while an undergraduate student at Princeton University, where he studied Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German and Sanskrit. He began his career as a spy on a hospital roof in Japan (more about that later).

    After graduating from high school at the top of his class, Moe went to Princeton, an unusual accomplishment for a poor Jewish boy in the 1920s. He became the star shortstop of the college baseball team, graduated magna cum laude and was offered a teaching post in Princeton’s Department of Romance Languages. Wanting to study experimental phonetics at the Sorbonne but unable to afford graduate study overseas, Berg accepted a contract to play shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Moe’s hitting was below par and he was sent to the minors after the 1924 season. It was Moe who inspired a professional scout to coin the immortal baseball phrase, "Good field, no hit." One teammate said, "Moe, I don’t care how many of them college degrees you got, they ain’t learned you to hit that curve ball no better than the rest of us."

    Berg returned to the majors in 1926 with the Chicago White Sox. At the same time, he attended Columbia Law School. Despite his hectic schedule, the brilliant Berg managed to finish second in his class at Columbia. That year, the White Sox asked him to play catcher, a position that took advantage of his strong arm and intelligence. Casey Stengel compared Berg’s defensive skills to the immortal Bill Dickey. Moe hit .287 in 1929 and received votes for Most Valuable Player but in 1930 he seriously injured his knee, ending his career as a full-time player. He played as a reserve for three more teams until he retired in 1939.

    In 1934, Berg toured Japan with a group of major league all-stars, including Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. Still respected as a linguist, Moe was invited to lecture at Meiji University, where he delivered an eloquent speech in Japanese. Apparently, before the trip, the U.S. government had recruited Berg as a spy. While at a Tokyo hospital ostensibly visiting an American mother who had just given birth, he sneaked onto the roof and took photos of the city. Pilots reportedly later used the photos during bombing raids in World War II.

    As a Jew wanting to fight Nazism, Berg volunteered to serve when America entered the war in 1941. He was asked to become a Goodwill Ambassador to Latin America. Before he left on his ambassadorial mission, Berg made a radio broadcast to the Japanese people over the radio in which, to quote his biographers Harold and Meir Ribalow, "In fluent Japanese, he pleaded at length, ‘as a friend of the Japanese people,’ for the Japanese to avoid a war ‘you cannot win.’" The Ribalows report, "Berg’s address was so effective that several Japanese confirmed afterwards they had wept while listening."

    After his stint in Latin America, Moe returned to the U.S. to work for the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency. He parachuted into Yugoslavia and, after meeting Tito, suggested that the U.S. back him rather than his Serbian rival. Despite the fact that he was not a scientist, Berg was next assigned to help determine how close Germany was to developing an atomic bomb. In a few weeks studying textbooks, Berg taught himself a great deal about nuclear physics. Traveling through Europe, Berg discovered that a factory in Norway was producing an atomic bomb component for the Nazis and Allied planes bombed it. Berg then learned that the Nazis had an atomic research center at Duisberg, Germany, and it too was bombed.

    Incognito, Berg managed to lure the leading German atomic physicist, Werner Heisenberg, to Switzerland to give a lecture on quantum theory. At a dinner afterwards, Berg heard Heisenberg imply that Germany was behind the U.S. in bomb development. President Roosevelt greeted Berg’s report warmly. At great risk as a Jew, Berg spent parts of 1944 and 1945 in Germany, helping arrange for the capture of several prominent German atomic scientists by U.S. troops before the Russians got them. At war’s end, Berg was offered the Medal of Merit, the highest award given to civilian in the war effort, but he modestly declined it. Moe lived out a quiet life in Newark, where he died at age 70.

    Some of Berg’s friends felt he squandered what could have been a brilliant career in law or academics to play baseball. His brother observed that "all [baseball] ever did was make him happy." His teammate Ted Lyons said, "A lot of people tried to tell him what to do with his life and brain and he retreated from this . . . He was different because he was different. He made up for all the bores of the world. And he did it softly, stepping on no one."

Last Week’s Trivia

    Dick Littlefield was a journeyman pitcher who played for 10 teams during his nine-year major league career. He established fame off the field of play without pitching a ball. When the Brooklyn Dodgers traded an aging (37) Jackie Robinson on Dec. 13, 1956 to the New York Giants for Littlefield and $35,000 cash, Robinson balked at playing for any other club, especially the rival Giants, and vetoed the move by announcing his retirement on Jan. 5, 1957.

Note

    Brooklyn fans wanted to lynch Walter O’Malley for this insensitive trade. I’d have volunteered to make certain the rope was securely knotted, and kick the chair out from under him, and I’d have paid $35,000 for the privilege. (One problem: I didn't have the $35,000 back in 1956. I still don't.)

    Thanks to my cousin and sports enthusiast, Len Adams (Len has forgotten more about sports than I know), for the outstanding article he sent me as written by noted author and columnist George Vecsey and published this week in the New York Times on the subject of Jackie Robinson. The title: “Robinson’s Relevance Spans The Decades.” It absolutely does!

    Had he lived, Jackie Robinson would have been 88 years old yesterday.

Trivia Question of the Week

    Thanks to Richard Lamaro for this one. What is Bill Mosienko’s claim to fame? See next week’s Sports Junkie for the answer.