Clooney Bats Life Into Balls

George Clooney is in final talks to star in and produce The Catcher Was a Spy, a baseball spy thriller about the true-life exploits of Morris 'Moe' Berg. Languishing in development at Miramax until the deal collapsed not long ago. Clooney took it to Warner Bros., where his Maysville Productions company is based. The film is based on the 1994 book by Nicholas Dawidoff about Berg, a polyglot and Wall Street attorney - according to the CIA Kids Website - who played with such teams as the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Washington Senators during a career spanning the 1920s and 30s. While gracing the field for the Senators, he was recruited as a spy by the Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA). Dawidoff's book - to be adapted by Stan Chervin - alleges that in addition to taking undercover photos in Japan while on a tour of the Orient with Babe Ruth in the 1930s, Berg later was assigned to take out Werner Heisenberg, who was developing the nuclear bomb for Germany. Clooney's previous films include The Peacemaker and Out Of Sight.