When Nicholas Dawidoff’s book The Catcher Was a Spy was first published in 1994, it was one of those rare, unbelievable stranger-than-fiction stories that practically leaped off the page. The basic thumbnail went like this: During World War II, at the height of the A-bomb race between the U.S. and Nazi Germany, Moe Berg, a Jewish major-league baseball player who was leading a double life and spoke 10 languages, was sent on a top-secret mission overseas by the OSS to
