This lot is closed. Bidding ended on 12/12/2013.
Moe Berg was one of the most interesting figures in the history of baseball. Berg was a journeyman Major League catcher who played a total of fifteen seasons between the years 1923 and 1939, but it is not his baseball career that has intrigued present-day historians. Unbeknownst to all at the time, Berg was also working as a spy for the U.S. Government and was later recruited by the OSS, the forerunner to today's CIA. After his playing career, Berg traveled throughout Europe gathering information on Germany's nuclear capabilities. Following World War II he worked briefly for he CIA in an attempt to obtain Soviet atomic information. Always mysterious in his actions, the last two decades of his life were spent as a nomad. This jacket, as well as many other Berg items were originally sourced from Moe Berg’s brother, Sam Berg. Inside the rear collar is a “A.G. Spalding & Bros.” manufacturer’s tag. Below reads “BERG” written in black marker. The front left chest has a navy blue felt “P” sewn onto the chest pocket. The navy blue felt outlines three pockets and the neck collar. A single row of three buttons runs down the front of the jacket. The hang strap is not connected inside the rear collar. This jacket is properly tagged, was presented to us as attributed to Berg and in our opinion shows appropriate wear.
This jacket was originally sourced when famed collector Barry Halper purchased an extraordinarily large number of other items once belonging to Moe Berg, directly from Berg's family representative. Included in the collection was incredible material, including this very baseball jacket and his Princeton game-used baseball jersey (auctioned in the 1999 Halper Sotheby's auction, and identified in the collar in black marker exactly as this Princeton team jacket). All of the items Halper received were once the property of Sam Berg's brother Moe, and for virtually all of the pieces there was no doubt that Moe had owned them due to the nature of the items. Included in the collection, along with this jacket, were all of Moe Berg’s passports, his 1934 Tour of Japan souvenirs, his personal correspondence, his handwritten high school and college notebooks and voluminous personal materials as well as spy-related documents, including even his OSS (the predecessor of the CIA) photo ID card. We have no doubt that this is Moe Berg's jacket. It is listed as attributed to use by Berg solely because there is no accompanying first-hand documentation attesting to its lineage.