A great baseball story

From a friend:

When baseball greats Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig went on tour in baseball-crazy Japan in 1934, some fans wondered why a third-string catcher named Moe Berg was included.
 
The answer was simple: Berg was a US spy. Speaking 15 languages - including Japanese - Moe Berg had two loves: baseball and spying.
 
In Tokyo, garbed in a kimono, Berg took flowers to the daughter of an American diplomat being treated in St. Luke's Hospital - the tallest building in the Japanese capital.  
 
He never delivered the flowers. The ball-player ascended to the hospital roof and filmed key features: the harbor, military installations, railway yards, etc.
 
Eight years later, General Jimmy Doolittle studied Berg's films in planning his spectacular raid on Tokyo.

Catcher Moe Berg
 
Berg's father, Bernard Berg, a pharmacist in Newark, New Jersey, taught his son Hebrew and Yiddish.  Moe, against his wishes, began playing baseball on the street aged four.
 
His father disapproved and never once watched his son play.  In Barringer High School, Moe learned Latin, Greek and French.
 
He graduated magna cum laude from Princeton - having added Spanish, Italian, German and Sanskrit to his linguistic quiver.
 
During further studies at the Sorbonne, in Paris, and Columbia Law School, he picked up Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Indian, Arabic, Portuguese and Hungarian - 15 languages in all, plus some regional dialects.
 
While playing baseball for Princeton University, Moe Berg would describe plays in Latin or Sanskrit.

Tito's partisans
 
During World War II, he was parachuted into Yugoslavia to assess the value to the war effort of the two groups of partisans there.  He reported back that Marshall Tito's forces were widely supported by the people and Winston Churchill ordered all-out support for the Yugoslav underground fighter, rather than Mihajlovic's Serbians.
 
The parachute jump at age 41 undoubtedly was a challenge. But there was more to come in that same year. Berg penetrated German-held Norway, met with members of the underground and located a secret heavy water plant - part of the Nazis' effort to build an atomic bomb. His information guided the Royal Air Force in a bombing raid to destroy the plant.
 
The R.A.F. destroys the Norwegian heavy water plant targeted by Moe Berg. There still remained the question of how far had the Nazis progressed in the race to build the first Atomic bomb.  If the Nazis were successful, they would win the war.  Berg (under the code name "Remus") was sent to Switzerland to hear leading German physicist Werner Heisenberg, a Nobel Laureate, lecture and determine if the Nazis were close to building an A-bomb.  Moe managed to slip past the SS guards at the auditorium, posing as a Swiss graduate student. The spy carried in his pocket a pistol and a cyanide pill.
 
If the German indicated the Nazis were close to building a weapon, Berg was to shoot him - and then swallow the cyanide pill.  Moe, sitting in the front row, determined that the Germans were nowhere near their goal, so he complimented Heisenberg on his speech and walked him back to his hotel.

Werner Heisenberg - he blocked the Nazis from acquiring an atomic bomb.
 
Moe Berg's report was distributed to Britain's Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and key figures in the team developing the Atomic Bomb.  Roosevelt responded: "Give my regards to the catcher." Most of Germany's leading physicists had been Jewish and had fled the Nazis mainly to Britain and the United States.
 
After the war, Moe Berg was awarded the Medal of Merit ,America's highest honor for a civilian in wartime.  But Berg refused to accept, as he couldn't tell people about his exploits.
 
After his death, his sister accepted the Medal and it hangs in the Baseball Hall of Fame, in Cooperstown,
 

Chicago Tribune cartoon from 1934

Here is an editorial cartoon 75 years old! Seem familiar? Most all of us know what happened and how long it took to get things straightened out. Most of those in DC weren't even born then!

Look at this cartoon from 1934 and look especially carefully at the plan of action. Remember the adage, "Those who do not remember the past are doomed to repeat it." Looks like we could be in for difficult times. Frightening.

This could have been drawn yesterday. What has changed?

CARTOON FROM THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 1934

Plan of action for U.S.
Spend! Spend! Spend
Under the guise of recovery - bust the government - blame the capitalists for the failure - junk the Constitution and declare a dictatorship.

Vets Fight to Keep Mojave Desert Memorial Cross

After WWI many U.S. soldiers moved to the California desert to find physical and emotional healing. In 1934, they erected a memorial to honor their fallen comrades, a single white cross, - a symbol used around the world to memorialize those who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

The site for the memorial was chosen because at a certain time of day, the sun casts a shadow on the rock which resembles a WWI doughboy. For more than 75 years, the memorial has stood as a reminder that there were those who fought and died for our freedoms.

But sadly today, the ACLU and a federal judge in California, want to tear it down. In fact, the judge has ordered the memorial covered from view while the case is on appeal.

Please join us in saying "donttearmedown." We think Americans should honor their war heroes and the freedoms they so valiantly protect; and we're taking our case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court this Fall.

Join them in their battle, go to: www.donttearmedown.com

Please watch this six minute video first!

1934 cartoon fits USA today like a glove

PLAN OF ACTION FOR U.S.
SPEND! SPEND! SPEND!
UNDER THE GUISE OF RECOVERY
BUST THE GOVERNMENT
BLAME THE CAPITALISTS FOR THE FAILURE
JUNK THE CONSTITUTION AND DECLARE A DICTATORSHIP

And that's what the power-drunk "young pinkies from Harvard and Columbia" are doing in this political cartoon, originally published in the Chicago Tribune on April 21, 1934.