The Spy Behind Home Plate

[primeideal]

Every once in a while there's hand-wringing in papers and on the internet about "oh noez baseball is dying because the average age of the fans is getting old." Which, no. I am a young baseball fan, lots of my baby cousins play baseball/softball, lots of people are casually engaged with "oh the Cubs were in the World Series that one time, better watch!"

 

However, the average age of one demographic is disconcertingly high, and that is the age of people who go to movies about professional baseball players who were also World War II spies. I was at the movie with my parents the other day and I brought down the average age considerably!

 

It was a very good movie, after the first couple minutes of intro talking heads being like "this guy is important" "yes he is" "so patriotic." And the general format of "authors taking turns reading things" felt kind of unnecessary--like it was cool to hear from people close to the action like Berg's brother and his cousin, but some of the "let's bring in all these different authors and give them all a chance to quote things because they wrote about Moe Berg" was not necessary.

 

Very good though. Snippets of Babe Ruth's dramatic life, Werner Heisenberg's son talking about his father dodging assassination, Princeton eating clubs and their discriminatory policies, and a whole lot in between. There was a nice touch about the two brothers and the different paths they took in serving their countries, "what does it mean to be an American" and so on, which felt timely as I ponder my own future. Fortunately I think that no matter where I wind up my dad will be more supportive of my choices than Moe's was.