Moe Berg's First Game As Catcher

August 5, 1927

Moe Berg's First Game As Catcher

If you’re a baseball fan, you almost certainly already know who Moe Berg was.

Berg’s SABR biography is absolutely fascinating. Though he was born in a small tenement on East 121st Street in Manhattan, Berg wound up gaining fluency in 12 different languages, and lived an adventure-filled life that extended to espionage activity during World War II.

As a self-taught polyglot myself, I’ve always admired Berg. Sure, he couldn’t hit a lick — but, then again, I wasn’t a great hitter as a young player anyway.

The fascinating thing, though, is that Berg didn’t become a catcher until 1927, when he was already in the major leagues. And it all happened by accident.

It happened on August 5, 1927. The White Sox were bad and fading fast; they would wind up losing to the Red Sox in Boston on this occasion. Meanwhile, the Cubs were playing brilliantly, and so the Chicago Tribune focused most of its attention on the northsiders.

This is what the standings looked like at the end of play that day:

From The Chicago Daily Tribune, August 6, 1927, page 11

As for the Yankees — well, you already know about them. Those of you interested in baseball trivia might be surprised that the Senators were in second place, though, and that the infamous 1927 Philadelphia Athletics were just hovering over .500 as late as August 6.

The account of the White Sox game was so depressing that it was relegated to the second page of The Chicago Daily Tribune, right next to the horse race charts. The headline certainly wasn’t positive:

From The Chicago Tribune, August 6, 1927, page 12

Scoring only 3 runs in a three game series against the 1927 Boston Red Sox is not a good sign. I’ve played enough APBA games with the 1927 season to feel confident that I could probably drive in 3 runs against that 1927 Red Sox pitching staff on my own.

The interesting bit, though, is that Berg entered the game as a catcher in the 3rd inning, after catcher Harry McCurdy seems to have been literally knocked out of the game:

The best description of what happened comes from Berg’s SABR biography:

Berg apparently did a fairly good job as catcher. He caught something like a dozen games in 1927, and wound up being a catcher for the rest of his career.

Now, you’re probably wondering whatever happened to the other White Sox catcher. This would have been Buck Crouse, who it seems was injured in the second game of the doubleheader on August 2nd.

Unfortunately, I’m not entirely sure what happened on August 2nd. Crouse was taken out of the ballgame in the first inning, but none of the papers I have access to mention why. The White Sox were so mediocre that the Chicago newspapers had given up on them by this time, and The Philadelphia Inquirer didn’t mention any injury.

At any rate, it seems that Berg got the nod because Ray Schalk literally had nobody else to choose. And it seems that he did pretty well in the end.