The Catcher Was a Spy was so disappointing that I did not feel like reading the book that the filmmakers allegedly adapted. When I repeatedly saw previews for The Spy Behind Home Plate and noticed that the author, Nicholas Dawidoff, was interviewed in the documentary, I decided to give him a second chance. If the documentary were good, then I would check out the book, and it was so I will.
It isn’t a contest. Anyone with a slight interest in Moe Berg should completely bypass The Catcher Was a Spy and watch The Spy Behind Home Plate. For those of you who do not know about Berg, he was the son of Ukrainian culturally Jewish immigrants, an avid scholar, a reluctant lawyer and an enthusiastic professional baseball player. In addition, apparently he was also a spy for the US and contributed to the war effort in both theaters during World War II. It is a compelling story that Hollywood bungled while Aviva Kempner hit a home run.
I was fortunate enough to attend a question and answer showing of The Spy Behind Home Plate featuring Kempner before and after the film. The theater had to add showings of the film because of an unexpected increase of interest in the film. People who don’t ordinarily come to the city to see films came out for this one, which is unusual for a documentary, but I live in Massachusetts, and Berg played for the Red Sox. The audience was older than the average moviegoer, and many of my fellow viewers were primarily interested because they were Jewish, which shows that there is an underserved market that is enthusiastic and willing to support films about Jewish protagonists. It also proves that older viewers are an untapped market that will come out in droves if a film piques their interest instead of insult their intelligence like the slew of Diane Keaton films that Hollywood periodically cranks out.
Kempner is a lively and eager raconteur off and onscreen and managed to convince me that I should definitely see The Spy Behind Home Plate again when it becomes available on DVD because there will be plenty of bonus features that are not included in the original documentary, but she is eager for interested viewers to see it in theaters and not just wait to watch it at home. The documentaries that you enjoy watching at home don’t get made without bucks at the box office. Kempner has a couple of future projects lined up that seem incredibly germane to our socio cultural landscape, so come out and watch this film.
The Spy Behind Home Plate features a lot of amateur film of Berg to accompany the interviews with family, friends, associates and journalists, which made it feel as if I was watching his life unfold before my eyes rather than hearing a bunch of talking heads. The interviewees did a great job of breaking down the logistics of Berg’s various accomplishments, especially his filming of Japan pre-World War II. Unfortunately his formerly classified work in Europe did not have such footage, and because I already had a rough idea of what happened, in spite of how exciting it was, the drone of voices began to lull me.
Without screaming “Message,” The Spy Behind Home Plate alluded to the fact that without diversity and immigrants, the Allies would not have won World War II. Someone tell Dunkirk’s Christopher Nolan. Even though Berg’s activities during World War II are widely known and easier to summarize unlike his surreptitious work pre-World War II, my personal tastes prefer the earlier parts of the film because we have to draw our own conclusions how one second Berg could be in Tokyo then in the middle of Berlin. It keeps Berg as the focal point whereas during World War II, because we did need context, he is only a thread in the tapestry of Allied efforts such as the creation of the OSS, the Manhattan Project, etc. All of this background is interesting, but makes Berg a supporting character in a documentary about his life. I’m not sure how to avoid that problem because I do think that the logistics of his operation within larger organization is not widely known, but it is an issue.
If I had to criticize The Spy Behind Home Plate, it would be because we don’t learn anything substantial about Berg’s life after World War II. To be fair, maybe he wasn’t a spy after World War II, and that subject is the priority of the film, not his complete biography; however on the way to that story, we learn a lot of details about him as a complete person, and I don’t think that should stop once his professional life ends. What makes people great often holds the seeds of destruction. His compulsive habits that helped him excel in the professional world may have been a sign of a mental disability that if untreated would get worse as he got older, and though I don’t know much about Berg, it seems as if his later life was not as glorious, but it does not make him any less interesting or diminish his accomplishments. It may make those accomplishments more remarkable in retrospect.
Unlike The Catcher Was a Spy, The Spy Behind Home Plate depicts Berg as only a ladies man, and Kempner directly addressed this issue. She did a considerable amount of research and could not find anything that revealed that he was bisexual or gay, only his heterosexual relationships. Isn’t there a saying that you can’t prove a negative? So Kempner could be right. On the other hand, one could argue that Berg was a spy, and the only reason that we know about that is because of the people that he interacted with whereas at the time, it was mutually beneficial for no one to reveal anything if you were anything other than straight even to your closest friends and family. I suppose that one would have to go to the filmmakers of the drama, check their sources and report back. According to Kempner, it would not be the only aspect of Berg’s life that the film took dramatic license.
I highly recommend The Spy Behind Home Plate if you’re interested in Berg, World War II, baseball or thrillers. As someone who is a sports atheist and whose eyes glaze over at the mere mention of sports, if baseball wasn’t a turnoff or a complicating factor for me, then you shouldn’t let that dissuade you from watching this documentary. Kempner would want me to advise you to stay for the credits
