There are certain individuals whose names have been adopted as shorthand in the fiction community. When you see their name, it usually means weird and/or wild shit is going to go down. There is no reason for a writer to throw in a reference to Nikolai Tesla, for example, unless they want to later have a death-ray or giant killer robot or just some sort of weird science in general. Similarly, if you see Aleister Crowley show up in a story, you know that there’s going to be magic involved, or possibly cults. Or maybe orgies, because that is how Crowley rolled.
I say it is well past time that another name was added to that list.
Moe Berg is the only recorded case in history of someone who was both a professional baseball player and a professional spy. He played for the White Sox and Red Sox primarily in his baseball career before World War II. While he played ball (he was a catcher), he taught himself Greek, Latin and Japanese, among other languages, and gained a reputation as the most intelligent, scholarly man in the game. But he was weird, too – Yogi Berra called him “the most peculiarest man in baseball.” When World War II started, Berg joined the OSS, specifically the part which would eventually become the Special Activities Division, and promptly parachuted into Yugoslavia where he was largely responsible for the United States deciding to support Tito. (Which, in retrospect, is the sort of decision that sucks to make, but believe me, when your choice was Tito or eventual turncoat Draza Mihajlovic, you picked Tito.) He also participated in operations to kidnap Italian rocket scientists and was once sent to assess and possibly assassinate Werner Heisenberg. (He decided Heisenberg was no threat to the United States.) After the war, he essentially retired from everything, living with and bothering his relatives. He died leaving no children and barely any family to mention.
Of course, what doesn’t get mentioned in the official history books is that he was a disciple of the Ancient One (back when the Ancient One was just kind of old, rather than ancient). He never wanted to be Sorcerer Supreme, but he mastered too many occult skills too quickly to be ignored, so when Berg made his first trip to Japan in 1932 to teach Japanese students how to play baseball, the Ancient One met him and taught him a few things, and they maintained a magical correspondence over the years. When the Ancient One needed help dealing with a matter of… import… a couple years later, Moe Berg somehow ended up on the American All-Stars team that went to Japan despite baseball stats and skills that were third-tier at most. (Funny how things can occasionally swing your way when you know a few tricks, isn’t it?)
He traveled to Europe and fought Nazi blood-sorcerers, marauding were-Cossacks and Fascist witch-hunters. He teleported all over Europe, handling the missions given to him both by the United States government and the Ancient One with equal skill. He didn’t wear a costume, preferring instead the anonymity of a rumpled suit, but nonetheless he saved Captain America’s ass on at least two occasions (one of which Bucky Barnes might well remember) and did relentless work for the forces of justice and mercy. And if once or twice a few SS commandants were found, with their bodies contorted in ways that men were not meant to bend – well, he was only human.
After the war, he wanted to keep working for the government, but J. Edgar Hoover had his claws sunk deep into every nook and cranny of American intelligence and Hoover – unlike most – knew about the hidden magical world, and believed in the necessity of American magical superiority. And Moe Berg wasn’t gonna let no anti-Semitic fat fuck like J. Edgar Hoover take over the reins of magical America. Hoover and Berg fought a thirty-year battle behind the scenes of American public life, Berg keeping up the facade of an eccentric crank as Hoover’s occult power waxed and waned. When Hoover died in 1972, it wasn’t high blood pressure – it was Moe Berg’s final master strike, prepared for years and played out just as Hoover’s ascension to the dark, forever-empty throne of America was about to commence.
Moe Berg died less than a month after Hoover – his work finally finished – but he left behind a series of extremely etoseric journals. The journals contain the keys to American magical power – the methods by which the occult fixtures surrounding and hidden within America’s public structures can be accessed, a lifetime’s work of cataloguing. Norman Osborn or Henry Peter Gyrich would kill to have them if they knew they existed. Those journals, and other things he left behind, are a letter of sorts to the Sorcerer Supremes who would follow the Ancient One, an “in case of fire break glass” kind of letter. The time for Stephen Strange to read that letter is fast approaching.
Top comment: A baseball-playing, Nazi-fighting, intellectual Jewish spywizard? At first I was thinking you took the collected works of Michael Chabon and put them in a centrifuge to separate out all the genderqueering. Then you threw in J. Edgar Hoover. — Chris Russell
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Moe sounds like the kind of guy I’d expect Gaiman to bring up. Good stuff.
A baseball-playing, Nazi-fighting, intellectual Jewish spywizard? At first I was thinking you took the collected works of Michael Chabon and put them in a centrifuge to separate out all the genderqueering. Then you threw in J. Edgar Hoover.
This. And of course he had to fight Otto Skorzeny at least once.
This. Is. Full. Of. Win.
Wow. I’ve been following your “Dr. Strange” series, and this pitch sounds the coolest of them so far. Someone *had* to stick in Hoover’s craw.
I gotta say, the Dr. Strange stuff has been BALLS OUT FANTASTIC so far…this is my favorite one! keep it coming, big guy!
I approve of J. Edgar Hoover as an evil wizard. I’m just curious about how you plan to do Nixon.
I’m noticing what may become a trend linking baseball to the magical world.
Now this might be because baseball itself can be so complicated that it’s practically mystical (ignoring football and cricket which actually are mystical and while the fate of the universe riding on whether the Patriots win requiring Captain America to play quarterback is not likely, you can use the magic to brew a decent cup of coffee).
In other words, I think we should be taking a better look at Yogi Berra and see if his ramblings weren’t just eccentric mannerisms but the result of a partially broken mind and years of wisdom gained during the mystical war that he’s waging using only his mind on another plane of existence. He’s still fighting it too and probably will still be fighting it because well, “It ain’t over til its over”.
This one is not only awesome, it’s so awesome it should be a series all by itself.
Forget writing Dr. Strange – I want to see the Golden, Silver and Bronze Age adventures of Moe Berg now. Especially the Shadow War against J. Edgar Hoover – that’s pure genius.
Zifnab, all savvy evil wizards have a scary lieutenant, monster or dragon to keep attention away from themselves. Nixon just survived his creator.
A Captain America cameo in my Doctor Strange comic? It’s more likely then you think. And also awesome. If there’s one thing Marvel has been missing it’s WW2 era Captain America stories. With Nazi wizards.
You know, having read Berg’s biographies, this actually makes a helluva lot of sense….
Since he was active during WWII, I’m just going to go ahead and assume he participated in the obligatory Wolverine & Nick Fury team-ups.
Sine he was active during WWII, I’m just going to go ahead and assume he participated in the obligatory Wolverine & Nick Fury team-ups.
It started to get a little “National Treasure” like, towards then end, but otherwise it’s an engrossing new piece.
Well, a fair deal of the Marvel U fought in the big one.
Heck, Richards was a fellow OSS agent. Came up in the reader mailbag issue and the one where he met up with his old war buddy Nick Fury to fight a Hitler clone in South America.
I would buy Moe Berg vs Hoover… I’d even stop my Marvel boycott to do it.
Hagan: what did Marvel do to earn your boycott?
Holy crap, this is amazing.
So while Cap and the X-Men were fighting Nixon and his Secret Empire, Moe and his boys were fighting Hoover and his Shadow Revolution?
Cool.
Pshaw. Everyone knows it was Maggiacicians who forced Hoover from power. They used a picture of him sacrificing a she-goat to Cytorrak as blackmail.
Seriously, you should drop the Strange stuff and write this as a novel.
For magic powers (i.e., kill-at-a-distance), you need:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father_Divine
Going back earlier, you’ve got:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Francis_Train
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Ungern_von_Sternberg
(dude even looks like a crazed psychotic warlord)
And, of course, Howard Hughes, Lola Montez, Hong Xiuquan (the central figure of the Taiping Rebellion), Emperor Norton and Tristan Tzara
And freakin’ Papa Doc with his freakin voodoo zombies.
Boy, if you like this story, you’re going to love The Pilgrim. It starts with, among other things, why Ian Fleming recruited Aleister Crowley to work for the Allies in WWII…
Two things to add-
1) Moe Berg, seriously how is there not a Bio-pic on this guy- they don’t have to show the postwar stuff, show the growing up in the early-1900s NYC (throw in some stickball stuff), going to Princeton and the Columbia Law during a time when anti-semitism was still an issue at the Ivies (shades of that one Brendon Fraiser flick), old-school baseball, a Jewish Spy fighting Nazi’s (everyone likes oppressed vs. the oppressor flicks- they work on a visceral level), have the climax be deciding whether or not to kill one of the most brilliant men of the 20th century- how is that not both crazy entertaining and Oscar Bait- its like one of those E.L. Doctorow/ Forrest Gump – man flits through history stories- only its actually true, I mean seriously we had someone expand a one of Melville’s less heralded short stories and this is left on the table what the hell?!)
2) Is there anyway you can make Hoover be a shell for some sort of anti-semitic sorceress/succubus/ demon or what have you- because then you could work in: the Nazi-occult angle (might be over-explored/ too Mignola-though he wasn’t the first), Hoover’s cross-dressing, the banished whathaveyou’s revenge that only Strange and the Spirit form of Moe Berg can defeat (ooh! a bat with arcane inscriptions that Strange can smack things with- you know big, long buildup, astral battle, etc. and the Sorcerer Supreme ends it by walking up and just wailing on something with a bat).
“Any similarity to actual Jewish baseball player/spies, living or dead, is purely coincidental.”
Actually now that I think about it- If you actually really want to write comics- this write here, not Strange or Legion, this is your foot in the door- this idea is so money for a non-big 2 line- I mean “Shadow Wars” or “Moe Berg: American Badass” or what have you could be the next Hellboy/BPRD; Helen Killer; Teddy Roosevelt; cult hit, I mean c’mon its got that slightly off-kilter: Historical figure who had hidden stuff angle plus Were-Cossacks.
er “right” here.
[…] talk about why he should write Doctor Strange, this time bringing the (real-life) baseball legend Moe Berg into the […]
It’s kinda getting tiresome for some character to show up in the WW2 and save Cap’s ass – you pretty much turn Rogers into a chump if his glory days are everyone else saving him from danger and showing him to be a flacid milksop. These kind of retcons just make Steve Rogers into Craptain Asserica, Super-Sucker.
“Hagan: what did Marvel do to earn your boycott?”
I’ll field this one, since I know the internet: it existed. Don’t believe me? Remember, Marvel’s got a readership that decided to protest One More Day with book burnings.
“When Hoover died in 1972, it wasn’t high blood pressure – it was Moe Berg’s final master strike, prepared for years and played out just as Hoover’s ascension to the dark, forever-empty throne of America was about to commence.”
This sounds straight out of a Tim Powers novel.
Which is yet another reason it is AWESOME.
Ever read ‘The Golem’s Mighty Swing’?
i was working on a comic that started with a mage ending the Red Socks curse…
as for ‘notoriously awesome Jews’: Bob Dylan is a mage. or a god. or an avatar of a god. or something. or all of them
Thank you, thank you, and thank you again for this. I’ve been fascinated with Moe Berg for a long time, not the least reason being the large stretches of just plain nothin’ in his life. It’s always hard to read of extraordinary minds who decide not to share them with the world anymore. Now we’ll know why! I see him taking a Lobster-Johnsonesque role in this imaginary narrative. Good god, does the world need that.
Oh, and this: Moe Berg had a newspaper obsession. He read multiple newpapers, in multiple languages, every word, every day, and his hotel rooms during road trips would be awash in newsprint. But, say, Dom Dimaggio doesn’t necessarily know Cyrillic or Sanskrit from Late Lemurian-B…
I love this concept. Easily my favorite of your Strange stuff.
I love the story, but I suspect it fits more in the gaming background convention then a comic story. Still cool, though.
This is my favorite so far.
Well, of COURSE Dr. Strange knows about Moe! He *is* a baseball fanatic! (Probably got it from the Ancient One…)
In case anyone is curious, here’s the official CIA History website’s blurb on Moe Berg:
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2007-featured-story-archive/moe-berg.html
Actually the throne of America wasn’t forever empty. Fortunately Emperor Norton never exercised his power for evil.
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