Monday, August 8, 1927: New York City

Benny and Berg

Myles Thomas

Published in

The Diary of Myles Thomas

6 min readNov 14, 2016

Schoolboy Hoyt’s good pal Moe Berg was in town with the White Sox this weekend for two games, Saturday and Sunday.

Hoyt didn’t have to go searching for him this time — after bouncing between shortstop and second base for his two and a half years in the bigs, on Saturday Berg suddenly popped up behind the plate, as the White Sox new catcher.

Before the game I was talking with Aaron Ward, who played for the Yanks for a decade before being traded to Chicago last winter for Grabowski and Morehart, and Ward said that last week both of the ChiSox regular catchers were injured — Buck Crouse split his finger on a foul ball, and Harry McCurdy cut his hand badly on one of the Red Sox’s spikes in Friday’s game.

On top of that, ChiSox player-manager Ray Schalk still hadn’t recovered from his collision with Julie Wera — which broke Schalk’s nose and separated his shoulder — the day we dined with Al Capone in Chicago, last month.

According to Ward, after McCurdy got spiked on Friday, “His hand was a mess. There was blood all over the place. And as our trainer’s trying to stanch the bleeding, Schalk looks down the bench and in desperation asks, ‘Can any of you boys play catcher?’

“Berg raises his hand, like he’s in grammar school, and says, ‘I used to think I could.’

“Schalk says, ‘Who told you you couldn’t?’

“Moe says, ‘My high school coach.’

“Schalk looks at the big Hymie and says, ‘Well, do me a favor, Moses, and put on the equipment and let’s prove him wrong.’”

So now Berg’s behind the plate, and according to Ward, “The Jew from Princeton can do anything a regular catcher can do except hit — but that’s okay, since he couldn’t hit when he was playing the infield, either.”

Schoolboy and Berg apparently have a ceasefire in the Great Chinese Baseball War of 1927. My guess is it’s a permanent ceasefire, as I don’t see Schoolboy becoming fluent in Mandarin anytime soon, even though there’s no way he’s actually waving the white flag. But that hasn’t exactly shut Berg up, who’s a regular Rosetta Stone behind the plate.

After the Babe was called out on pitches in the first inning, he came back to the dugout mumbling about Berg chattering to him his entire at bat — in German.

“I get in the box and he starts sprechen-ing to me, asking me if I know any good German restaurants in Manhattan. Then he’s asking me my favorite dishes, and if I eat hot dogs with kraut on them — cause he says he never sees kraut in any of the pictures of me eating hot dogs — and, Jesus, next thing I know Van Graflan’s punching me out on strikes.”

Ruth went 0–4 in the game.

“In the third he was asking me in German where I was planning on going hunting this winter — I was thinking about it when I struck out. In the fifth, just before I grounded out, he asked me what meeting Lindbergh was like. And in the eighth he wanted to know who my favorite girl is at the Good Shepherd — I told him it was none of his goddamn business. And then I popped out.”

Berg spoke German to Gehrig, too. Lou said he asked Roy Van Graflan, the umpire behind the plate, to tell Berg to zip it. “But that only ended up with Berg speaking Dutch to Van Graflan.”

Lazzeri had the same experience with Berg, except he went 2–4 at the plate. His first time up, he singled and was driven home on a hit by Pennock. When he got back to the bench, the first thing the W*p said was, “Their catcher’s Italian accent is thicker than my old man’s.”

“What was he talking to you about?” I asked him.

“He knows San Francisco really well. He was asking me about the Chinatown out there.”

We lost the game 6–3 to Ted Lyons who is now 18–8 on a White Sox team that’s 52–55. I think Lyons has been the most underrated, and maybe the best pitcher in the league over the past three seasons.

Despite the loss, there’s one play in the fifth inning that captures how close a team we’ve become on the field:

With two outs and the bases empty, ChiSox right fielder Bill Barrett crushes a ball over Earle Combs’s head in center. It’s easily a triple, maybe even an inside the park home run . . .

Earle’s jackrabbit fast, so he gets to the ball quickly, but he’s got no arm. Knowing this, the Babe sprints from right to shallow center, and hollers for Earle to throw him the ball . . .

Earle delivers a strike to Ruth, who whirls and fires it home to Benny behind the plate, to cut down Barrett who’s steaming toward home — but Ruth airmails his throw over Benny’s head . . . and the ball rolls back to the screen.

But Gehrig’s run in to back up the play — he sprints to the backstop, picks up the ball and fires it to Benny at the plate.

Lou’s throw reaches Benny just as Barrett barrels into him from behind. Now Benny and Barrett are both splayed out in the dirt, momentarily stunned, with the ball lying next to them. And the W*p’s running towards them, shouting, “Tag him! Tag him!”

Benny picks up the ball . . . rolls five feet over to Barrett. . . and tags him out.

Watching the play from the bench — my new permanent position since my talk with Huggins — I couldn’t have been prouder of my roomie.

And I couldn’t have felt more like a fan, and less like a player.