Baseball : The Masonic Sport?

http://vigilantcitizen.com/?p=234

Baseball : The Masonic Sport?
Dec 19th, 2008 By Vigilant

Appropriately called “America’s Pastime”, baseball is less a sport than it is a ritual. It is slow paced, the players are immobile most of the time, standing on geometric shapes. The philosopher Morris Raphael Cohen described baseball as a national religion.Almost all ancient civilizations had some sort of ritualistic sporting events that mixed athletic prowess and religious beliefs. The Mayan’s ball game, which resembled somewhat our basketball. The goal was to get the ball through one of the rings situated about 20 feet above the players without the use of hands. This game was a solemn experience, filled with ritual importance. Religious leaders attended, as did most chieftains and other government leaders. Sacred songs were sung and the games usually finished with a human sacrifice. The ball, the shape of the court and the rings all had important meanings in Mayan beliefs. Playing ball engaged one in the maintenance of the cosmic order of the universe and the ritual regeneration of life. It was a game of chance, skill and trickery reflecting life. The team effort engaged individuals in shared behaviour and culture, introducing, reinforcing and reinventing the game of life and peoples’ place in the cosmic order.

Are we that different from the Mayas, the Greeks, the Romans and almost all other civilizations? Well, the Freemasons, the most prominent society in America, are IMMENSELY inspired by ancient cultures like the Egyptians, Babylonians and Phoenicians. They study their rituals, their mythology and their forgotten knowledge of mathematics, geometry and astrology. Is it possible that the Masons devised their own “ritual” game which celebrates their sacred symbols?

American Freemasonry’s history goes back as far as American History… in some ways they are parallel. George Washington was the Grand Master of a Lodge, and there were even actions taken to create the rank of Grand Master of the whole of the United States for him. According to the Grand Lodge of Texas, “On September 18, 1783, President George Washington dressed in his Masonic apron, leveled the cornerstone of the United States Capitol with the traditional Masonic ceremony.” If you’ve watched, the documentary “Riddles in Stone” (available for free on this site), you’ve learned that masonic and occult symbols appear prominently all over Washington DC. The White House is situated at the tip of a large compass created by Vermont Avenue and Connecticut Avenue as they lead north. Of course, the emblem of Freemasonry is a compass overlapping a square (the tool). Masonic geometry and numerology (the sacred numbers) are appear on the streets as it appears on the field.

A Little History

The invention of baseball is usually credited to Abner Doubleday in 1870. Doubleday was a United States Army officer and Union general in the American Civil War. After he retired, he became a prominent member of the Theosophical Society, an organization that researches the esoteric and the occult. There is no doubt that he had extensive knowledge of occult symbols, sacred geometry and numerology.

The Square and the Compass

While almost all sports are played on rectangular fields or rinks, baseball is played on a peculiar shaped field which contains figures considered “sacred geometry” in masonic teachings. The field bears an astonishing resemblance to the Square and Compass of Freemasonry. The field, from home plate to the left and right field wall forms a compass; the entire outfield wall is the semicircle which this compass draws. Upside-down, overlapping this compass, the bases form the square. Thus, the baseball field is the emblem of Freemasonry.

This is what the Masonic Lodge of BC have to say about the compass and the square:

The square and compasses are the oldest, the simplest, and the most universal symbols of masonry. All the world over, whether as a sign on a building, or a badge worn by a Brother, even the profane know them to be emblems of our ancient Craft. Some Years ago, when a business firm tried to adopt the square and compasses as a trademark, the [USA] Patent Office refused permission, on the ground, as the decision said, that “there can be no doubt that this device, so commonly worn and employed by masons, has an established mystic significance, universally recognized as existing; whether comprehended by all or not, is not material to this issue.” They belong to such, alike by the associations of history and the tongue of common report.

Numerology

The numerology aspect of baseball is something to look at closely because it relates directly to the sacred numbers. You will notice that almost all numbers related to baseball are multiples or divisors of 9.

3 strikes
3 outs
9 fielding positions
9 innings
27 outs per game
81 homes games
81 games on the road

In Freemasonry, nine derives its value from its being the product of three multiplied into itself, and consequently in Masonic language the number nine is always denoted by the expression three times three. For a similar reason, 27, which is 3 times 9, and 81, which is 9 times 9, are esteemed ax sacred numbers in the advanced Degrees.
-Masonic Dictionnary

Every one is aware of the singular properties of the number nine, which, multiplied by itself or any other number whatever, gives a result whose final sum is always nine, or always divisible by nine. Nine multiplied by each of the ordinary numbers, produces an arithmetical progression, each member whereof, composed of two figures, and presents a remarkable fact.

9 . 18 . 27 . 36 . 45 54 . 63 . 72 . 81 . 90

So, 0+9=9, 1+8=9, 2+7=9 and so on. Look at the bar I’ve placed between 45 and 54. Numbers on each side of this bar form a mirror image. For all those reasons, 9 and its multiplesare considered sacred.

To conclude

Was this game designed to get thousands of people to cheer around a huge masonic square and compass? Are we tricking the population into a ritual celebrating masonic numerology? All I have to say is :

“Take me out to the ball game,
Take me out with the crowd.
Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack,
I don’t care if I never get back,
Let me root, root, root for the home team,
If they don’t win it’s a shame.
For it’s one, two, three strikes, you’re out,
At the old ball game.”

Why We Need A People’s History of Sports

E of S Nation: Our national (or my family’s) nightmare is over and A People’s History of Sports in the United States is now available for purchase. If you like Edge of Sports, please support the work by purchasing one or five copies of my new book A People's History of Sports in the United States (The New Press).

You can get in at:

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-History-Sports-United-States/dp/1595581006/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218899209&sr=8-2

Or if you are Amazon averse, please support Labyrinth Books at:

http://www.labyrinthbooks.com/all_detail.aspx?isbn=9781595581006

Or your local bookstore.

If you read it and like it, please go to Amazon and write a review and please pass on the below column!

In struggle and sports,
Dave Z

Nothing reveals so much about us as how we play the games we play.
- Q, Star Trek

Why We Need A People’s History of Sports
By Dave Zirin

There are those who insist that sports and politics don’t belong in the same sentence, the same zip code, or the same universe.

They mouth platitudes about how these two worlds must be hermetically sealed from one another, lest the dirty world of politics infect the sanctity of the playing field. Before the 2008 Olympics, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge said that "political factors" must be kept away from Beijing.

USA basketball Mike Krzyzewski chimed in, "None of these athletes (has) a responsibility to be political. They have the responsibility to represent their country." The chief of the Canadian Olympic Committee, Dick Pound, also thundered to the Canada’s Olympians, "If it is so tough for you that you can't bear not to say anything, then stay at home."

This is rank stupidity and stunning hypocricy. It’s a lie. People can say all they want that sports and politics have nothing to do with one another, but as the saying goes, “you don’t have to believe in gravity to fall out of an airplane.”

So much discussion of sports, both its past and present, is about sanding off, beautifying, or simply obliterating anything that might be seen as political.

Here is how sports history usually goes:

You have a hero - usually acting like the love child of John Wayne and Sarah Palin - with obstacles in their path. But all those obstacles are overcome with a good dose of true grit.

Whehter the autobiography of Cal Ripken or Dennis Rodman, one problem with sports history: it is hyper individualistic and completely absent of context. In other words it’s told a lot like history.

The other problem with sports history is that much of it is based on lies.

Once again, this is a lot like history. You could call it “Lies my Gym Teacher Told Me.”

Let’s take baseball. The Baseball Hall of Fame is located in beautiful All-American Cooperstown New York. Why? Because that’s where they tell us the game was invented by Army General Abner Doubleday.

There are some problems with this however. Three in fact.

The first is that the game wasn’t invented in Cooperstown.

The second is that Abner Doubleday never set foot in Cooperstown.

The third is the tiny fact that Abner Doubleday didn’t invent baseball.

In fact the good general didn’t know a baseball from an iPhone.

This Doubleday myth was created in 1895 by millionaire baseball owner Albert Spalding of Spalding sporting goods.

Spalding chose Cooperstown as the game’s birthplace because of its small town postcard beauty, which seemed like a better fit than the actual birthplace of baseball, Hoboken, New Jersey.

And why did Spalding tell us that General Doubleday as the game’s inventor? It played to the man’s political goals: to merge baseball with the All American virtues of patriotism and war.

As Albert Spalding announced his discovery that Doubleday was the great creator, he said:

“Baseball, I repeat, is war! And the playing of the game is a battle in which every contestant is a commanding general, wh ohaving gained an advantage, must hold it by every resource of his mind and muscle.”

Because of people like Albert Spalding, we don’t have a people’s history of sports. We have instead a bosses’ history of sports based on bluster and lies.

The real story of how the beauty of play developed into a trillion dollar business can only be understood by looking at the profound economic changes that took place as this country transitioned from a farming society, to the military and economic colossus it is today.

When this country was discovered, or conquered as the case may be, sports were considered a sin, the devil’s work, and blasphemy against God and Church. Then as the country developed and sports became something to both sell to people as entertainment, and socialize working class immigrants to see America as the greatest country on earth. But the 20th century saw numerous examples, public and private, where sports exploded in growth but also became a platform for spectacular dissent.

I wrote A People’s History of Sports in the United States to reclaim a sports history that is far more dynamic than we were ever led to believe. I wrote it because as Howard Zinn’s People’s History of the United States, taught so many of us, we learn about history not only to understand the past, but lay claim to the future. And if we can reclaim sports, if we can crash down the palace gates of play, there’s no telling what we can go after next.

[Dave Zirin is the author of “A People’s History of Sports in the United States” (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]