Was Moe Berg Gay?

Ben Lewin's 2018 biographical war film, 'The Catcher Was a Spy', casts light on the private life of the celebrated baseball player and Medal of Freedom recipient, Morris "Moe" Berg. In the motion picture, Moe is confronted concerning his sexuality many times. One of his Boston Red Sox comrades tails him to determine if he's homosexual. When he prepares to join the Office of Strategic Services, the head of the organization, Bill Donovan, inquires about it as well. The film also wraps up with the disclosure that Moe didn't end up in a relationship with Estella Huni, his longtime girlfriend. His sexual orientation and relationships continue to perplex his admirers!

Moe Berg's Sexual Orientation

Moe Berg kept mum regarding his sexuality. There were conjectures surrounding his being gay or bisexual, but there is no proof to validate these rumors in any way, shape, or form. "He [Moe] always was a fellow to embrace you and give you a hug. Occasionally, he'd say, 'Just a little feel.' He did that with a lot of blokes. Some took exception and would give him a shove or a tiny jab. You wondered a little, but you knew he was messing around with women," Moe's Red Sox teammate, Bobby Doerr, related to Nicholas Dawidoff for 'The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg,' the original source of the movie.

"Some chaps thought he [Moe] was queer. Guys from opposing teams would say, 'You've got a queer bastard.' He never made a pass at me or Jimmie Foxx, and he had all the opportunities in the world. I'll be damned if I believe it," Jack Wilson, another teammate, informed Dawidoff. The author, in his biographical work on the former baseball catcher, mentioned an Englishman who wrote to Moe, "Would to God I had taken your advice and stayed the night with you." The significance and the intention underlying the words remain a mystery. A rumor circulated that Moe was drawn to the mathematician and physicist H. P. Robertson's son, Duncan, who dismissed them.

"I believe he [Moe] was in the closet and he didn't know it. I don't think he was a practicing homosexual. I think he was attracted to people, period. I don't think he was more attracted to females than males. I don't believe he was aware of his identity," Duncan revealed to Dawidoff. Aviva Kempner, the maker of the documentary 'The Spy Behind Home Plate,' also disbelieves that he was gay. "The players who played with him talked about all these girlfriends, and then the testimony of Babe Ruth's daughter saying, 'I danced with him; he came onto me.' He had a long-time relationship," she shared with the Los Angeles Times.

As far as the potent implication in the movie that Moe had at least one same-sex liaison is concerned, screenwriter Robert Rodat did discuss it in an interview that was granted to The New York Times. "The benchmarks of veracity I utilized in the film were different. As a historian, when there's smoke, there's not necessarily fire. As a dramatist, when there's a massive amount of smoke, there's likely to be fire," Rodat stated.

Moe Berg Never Got Married

Moe Berg passed away at the age of seventy as a bachelor. His two siblings also remained unmarried. The former baseball player never articulated why he elected to remain single. His brother Dr. Sam, conversed about it with Dawidoff. "I never got married, my sister never got married — the three of us remained single. Lack of sanity," he told the author. Moe's cousin, Denise Shames, has a feasible explanation concerning the Bergs' decision to never marry.

"I believe there's a reason for that," Shames told the Los Angeles Times. "I believe it was an agreement they [the Bergs] all made. It didn't mean they didn't have relationships, some of them very enduring. The story my mother told was that when Sam was in medical school, he was studying genetics and he understood there was something in the family that should not be passed through to offspring," she supplemented.

However, Dawidoff's book unveils that Moe considered wedding Clare Hall, who was working as an advisory liaison between scientists and the military when they met. The biography confirms that they dated for a time. According to Hall, Moe proposed to her in 1954. "When are we going to get married?" he questioned her, as per Dawidoff's biography. Hall, at that juncture, didn't consider marriage, and he was understanding of her decision. "When he proposed to me, I took it seriously. I don't believe I would have considered marrying him. I think he wanted children. I think he wanted a son," she shared with the author.

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