NEW YORK _ Whether or not Moe Berg was the "strangest man ever to play baseball," as Casey Stengel reportedly once called him, he might have been the most interesting one.
But that reputation was forged off the field, not on it, where he spent 15 big league seasons in the 1920s and '30s as a backup catcher with a good glove and a .243 career batting average. He hit six home runs in 1,813 at-bats.
Berg is better known today as a mysterious, brainy bookworm who spoke multiple languages and turned that and a love of travel into a role as a spy for the United States before and during World War II, in both Asia and Europe.
