Re-Defining the Concept of "God"

I was listening to a Jesuit on the Neil Tyson show the other day,  that show does some pretty interesting segments sometimes, for sure. One part of that Jesuit show that was interesting was the priest talking about how Einstein often used the word "God" and Tyson tried to explain to the priest that science's concept of "God" is not what you think it is.

This essay will use three instances of popularizers of science and try to further explain what Tyson was trying to explain to the priest. The popularizers of modern science will be A) Buck Fuller, B) Carl Sagan, and C) Albert Einstein.

We'll do Einstein last to talk about his definition of "God" after the other two popularizers are explained to help delve into what Einstein's concept of "God" was.

Alright so first my boy Fulla...


Buck Fuller on "God"

I've read most of what Buck's written and there's a lot to work with in using his texts to try and explain how people of science view the concept of God, but, one clear-cut easy to work with example is Buck's re-writing or "re-thinking" rather of the "Lord's Prayer" which was composed in 1979 and reads as follows:

To be satisfactory to science
all definitions
must be stated
in terms of experience

I define Universe as
all of humanity’s
in-all-known-time
consciously apprehended
and communicated (to self or others)
experiences.

In using the word, God,
I am consciously employing
four clearly differentiated
from one another
experience-engendered thoughts.

Firstly I mean: —

Those experience-engendered thoughts
which are predicted upon past successions
of unexpected, human discoveries
of mathematically incisive,
physically demonstrable answers
to what theretofore had been misassumed
to be forever unanswerable
cosmic magnitude questions
wherefore I now assume it to be
scientifically manifest,
and therefore experientially reasonable that

scientifically explainable answers
may and probably will
eventually be given
to all questions
as engendered in all human thoughts
by the sum total
of all human experiences;
wherefore my first meaning for God is: —

all the experientially explained
or explainable answers
to all questions
of all time —

Secondly I mean: —
The individual’s memory
of many surprising moments
of dawning comprehensions
of an interrelated significance
to be existent
amongst a number
of what had previously seemed to be
entirely uninterrelated experiences
all of which remembered experiences
engender the reasonable assumption
of the possible existence
of a total comprehension
of the integrated significance —
the meaning —
of all experiences.

Thirdly, I mean:–
the only intellectually discoverable
a priori, intellectual integrity
indisputably manifest as
the only mathematically statable
family
of generalized principles —
cosmic laws–
thus far discovered and codified
and ever physically redemonstrable
by scientists
to be not only unfailingly operative
but to be in eternal
omni-interconsiderate,
omni-interaccommodative governance
of the complex
of everyday, naked-eye experiences
as well as of the multi-millions-fold greater range
of only instrumentally explored
infra- and ultra-tunable
micro and macro-Universe events.

Fourthly, I mean: —
All the mystery inherent
in all human experience,
which as a lifetime ratioed to eternity,
is individually limited
to almost negligible
twixt sleepings, glimpses
of only a few local episodes
of one of the infinite myriads
of concurrently and overlappingly operative
sum-totally never-ending
cosmic scenario serials

With these four meanings I now directly address God.

“Our God —
Since omni-experience is your identity
You have given us
overwhelming manifest: —
of Your complete knowledge
of Your complete comprehension
of Your complete concern
of Your complete coordination
of Your complete responsibility
of Your complete capability to cope
in absolute wisdom and effectiveness
with all problems and events
and of Your eternally unfailing reliability
so to do

Yours, Dear God,
is the only and complete glory.

By Glory I mean
the synergetic totality
of all physical and metaphysical radiation
and of all physical and metaphysical gravity
of finite
but nonunitarily conceptual
scenario Universe
in whose synergetic totality
the a priori energy potential
of both radiation and gravity
are initially equal
but whose respective
behavioral patterns are such
that radiation’s entropic, redundant disintegratings
is always less effective
than gravity’s nonredundant
syntropic integrating

Radiation is plural and differentiable,
radiation is focusable, beamable, and self-sinusing,
it is interceptible, separatist, and biasable —
ergo, has shadowed voids and vulnerabilities;

Gravity is unit and undifferentiable
Gravity is comprehensive
inclusively embracing and permeative
is nonfocusable and shadowless,
and is omni-integrative
all of which characteristics of love.
Love is metaphysical gravity.

You, Dear God,
are the totally loving intellect
ever designing
and ever daring to test
and thereby irrefutably proving
to the uncompromising satisfaction
of Your own comprehensive and incisive
knowledge of the absolute truth
that Your generalized principles
adequately accommodate any and all
special case developments,
involvements, and side effects;
wherefore Your absolutely courageous

omnirigorous and ruthless self-testing
alone can and does absolutely guarantee
total conservation
of the integrity
of eternally regenerative Universe

Your eternally regenerative scenario Universe
is the minimum complex
of totally intercomplementary
totally intertransforming
nonsimultaneous, differently frequenced
and differently enduring
feedback closures
of a finite
but nonunitarily
nonsimultaneously conceptual system
in which naught is created
and naught is lost
and all occurs
in optimum efficiency.

Total accountability and total feedback
constitute the minimum and only
perpetual motion system.
Universe is the one and only
eternally regenerative system.

To accomplish Your regenerative integrity
You give Yourself the responsibility
of eternal, absolutely continuous,
tirelessly vigilant wisdom.

Wherefore we have absolute faith and trust in You,
and we worship You
awe-inspiredly,
all-thankfully,
rejoicingly,
lovingly,
Amen.
(Buck)

 (video version of an older version of Buck Fulla's "Lord's Prayer": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJKLs6zEU8g&t=2m8s)
 

B.U.C.K.

Here in this prayer he is in total "Synergetics" mode which is kind of like some super-autistic language he made up. In English, Buck is basically saying that the concept of "God" is a direct synonym to the word "Universe". Everything that exists and can be understood by humans is defined as our Universe and our Universe is our God. Buck, just like Nelson Dwight Sickels, never put the word "the" in front of Universe...to him that was a form of blasphemy. It is "Universe" not "The Universe"...just like a religious person wouldn't say "The God" like "I'm praying to The God today" they would just say "I'm praying to God". Similarly with Buck, who believes Universe IS God, he never referred to Universe as "The Universe."

This, I think, is a good intro into understanding how people who deal with science view the concept of "God" and even though Buck mentions God in his prayer....he is not invoking the same concept as a religious person is when they use that term. God to Buck is simply Universe....nothing more and nothing less. God to him is "a series of integral truths which are a combined plurality of generalized principles."


Carl Sagan on how Spiritual this "Universe" is

Ok, so in trying to explain this rational yet spiritual view of "God" we are going to continue on with the definition of "Universe" to be a synonym of "God." If Universe is deified to represent "God" can people thus have spiritual experiences from this plurality of integral truths known as Universe?

Sagan has a book, I think it was a post-humous printing of talks he gave, which is called Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God.

Since this essay is trying to show that Universe can be spiritual in itself this book is a good place to go to next. The topic of spirituality derived from the beauty of the "Cosmos," on the radio show the other day where Neil Tyson debates a Jesuit priest he does cover this. At one point Tyson stated that while looking off a tall mountain and seeing the world under you and the clouds under you....a person can feel this sense of awe inspiring emotion from the beauty of the world. The beauty of Universe itself can surely be a spiritual experience in and of itself without the need for deities.

A guest on the radio show was also Richard Dawkins, a evolutionary biologist, who once described Sagan's book Varieties of Scientific Experience as....

"Was Carl Sagan a religious man? He was so much more. He left behind the petty, parochial, medieval world of the conventionally religious, left the theologains, priests, and mullahs wallowing in their small-minded spiritual poverty. He left them behind, because he had so much more to be religious about. They have their Bronze-Age myths, medieval superstitions and childish wishful thinking. He had the Universe." -Dawkins

First off, I don't know why he refers to Universe as "the" Universe...it looks really odd that "the" there. What he's saying makes sense though. I mean why when you're looking off a mountain enjoying how awesome your world is should you need to thank some voodoo "god" or stone-age deity for it? Why can't you just enjoy it? Not only enjoy it but let it invoke a sense of wonder about it that urges you to study it and understand it?

Who needs those "Bronze-Age" myths and texts anyway? There's parts of those books that are not very uplifting for today's society. A good chunk of the christ book is on how to properly punish sinners that's rife with eye plucking and terrible terrible burning, there's parts of the muslim book on what's the proper procedure for having relations with a child slave, there's parts of the jew book about what a jew isn't allowed to do and what you need to force "goyim sub-humans" to do that stuff for you. These old religious texts are ATROCIOUS and FUCKED UP. They don't instill a sense of wonder or awe in me....the bible, talmud, quran, etc. are super-duper depressing! I wouldn't allow children to read these books....they are 100 times worse than today's most violent movies and video games.

Not to burst your bubble but people like Carl Sagan and Neil Tyson are MORE religious than conventional religious people. These Bronze-Age myths aren't edifying or awe-inspiring in the least...there's nothing spiritual about them. They are just offensive and gross. Sagan and Tyson and others, can enjoy the beauty of Universe without the bull-doo-doo that goes with organized religion.

Since we're laying out the quotes hard up in here...we'll throw down a Sagan one too:

In its encounter with Nature, science invariably elicits a sense of reverence and awe. The very act of understanding is a celebration of joining, merging, even if on a very modest scale, with the magnificence of the Cosmos. And the cumulative worldwide build-up of knowledge over time converts science into something only a little short of a trans-national, trans-generational meta-mind. - Sagan

Science is all of humans' combined understanding of the "Cosmos" (which thanks to Tyson has become a popular word again.) Science is thus a "meta-mind", an all encompassing log of all humans' opinions/thoughts/feelings/generalizations/principles over all of trans-generational time.

"Cosmos" is a pretty good synonym for God too. I'm not so crazy about "Nature" anymore because over the last decade that word has been bastardized and ruined by the "organic food" and "organic medicine" people. "Natural" is quickly becoming a word solely used by jabronies in modern times so "Nature" with no "the" isn't a good go-to word for "God" these days.

Cosmos is written with a "the" so it can't be the best replacement word for "God"....it seems "Universe" with no "the" is still the coolest word at this point, I think.

Einstein and his Concept of "God"

So, coming back around to the main point, where the priest on the Tyson show claimed Einstein believes in God and Einstein is like the smartest guy so therefore smart people believe in God. As we can see from the previous two popularizers of science/rationality it is unlikely that this claim is gonna hold true. Einstein's concept of "God" is much more like Buck's concept of "Universe" and Sagan's concept of the "Cosmos."

Here is Einstein on religion:

"Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish.

However, we must concede that our actual knowledge of these forces is imperfect, so that in the end the belief in the existence of a final, ultimate spirit rests on a kind of faith. Such belief remains widespread even with the current achievements in science.

But also, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive."

-Einstein

From these words it's not hard to deduce that yes he was a religious guy and did believe in "God" yet after reading Fuller's concept of "God" and Sagan's concept of "God" can you maybe begin to suspect that Einstein is more in that area as well?


The final statement is him saying that, yes, he is religious but not in the "naive" sense of reading the bible/quran/talmud and praying to voodoo gods in the sky for a plentiful harvest this year or to make it rain. His belief in "God" is of a "special sort" which is based on the "laws of nature."

His view of God is an amalgamation of the laws of nature....the combination of all generalized principles in Universe and the trans-generational meta-data of the Cosmos....nothing more and nothing less. Yes he uses the word "God" but that doesn't mean he thought he's going to "Heaven" when he dies or that he can ask a magic man in the sky to give him a thousand bucks if he thinks really hard to him...no....he believes "God" is a set of natural laws.



Conclusion

The views of rational thinkers on religion and spirituality is not that much different than that of non-rational thinkers. Rational dudes/chicks just cut away the bull crap to get to the good part.

It's like chipping away at a rock until you are left with the diamond stuck in the center. Rational thinkers cut away all the silly crap associated with spiritualness....they cut away all the silly passages from books written two thousand years ago about floods n' slaves n' castration n' flying human-faced donkeys who kill entire armies of infidels...they throw ALL that GARBAGE away and focus on the meaty part of spirituality....the ever-invoking awe and wonder of the cool-cool world around us.

They find comfort in how cool the Natural Laws are that govern the Cosmos of our Scenario called Universe. You know what I mean?


End note: I'm not always sure Carl Sagan was that less naive than conventional religous-types as Dawkins was saying. With Sagan's alien bull-doo-doo, he did believe that there was a force "out there somewhere" that we can talk to and entrust our hopes and dreams to and this force in space would end up being our salvation.

His views on finding Aliens with radio signals really is a conventional religious experience, no doubt. The yearning for science people like Sagan, Hawking, SETI Institute and others to search for these "aliens" is definitely a replacement for religion for them. Sagan recorded messages for these Aliens which, I dunno 'bout you, but listening to them...it pretty much sounds like he's "praying" to these alien deities "out there." The alien stuff might be a very conventional religion for the non-religious types to use as a replacement for their discarded religions.

Farming. What's it all About?

Farming is so fun. I love gardening, I grow like beans, radii, tomatoes, carrots, and this and that in a small patch of field ever since I was a little kid.

Classic

I used to play that Harvest Moon on the Super Nintendo back in the day too. It was a fun and relaxing game that really had a "back to the land" sort of feel to it and all that. Like visiting an old era, you know? You grow crops, go fishin', pick weeds, give presents to chicks and get one to marry you and everything. A very simple game. Simple game. Very simple.

In real life, is farming supposed to be a simple and relaxing endeavor? Is it supposed to be as simple as it was in the "good old days"? Is it just a simple relaxing little hobby? I don't know about that.

Maybe you haven't noticed but there's 7+ billion dudes and chicks (oh and some transvestites) on this planet and they are all hungry to eat food. Can a simple agrarian "good old days" sort of "as god intended" method of farming succeed in feeding 7+ billion people? No, it can't.

Good Old Days?

Were these good old days of farming in real life as much fun as it was for me to simulate them in Super Nintendo's Harvest Moon? Was it really a close-knit community who shared and lived in a cute little utopia...or was it another case of Nostalgia for an Age which Never Existed?

How far back should we go to get to these Good Old Days anyway? Back to the age of hunting and gathering? No, that's way too far. Maybe back before the invention of the tractor? Back before pasteurization? Back before refrigeration? Back before ammonium nitrate fertilization? Before human altered plant strains? Back before what?

Teosinte to Corn

We can't go back before we bio-engineered hybrid plants because people have been selectively altering plants for thousands of years. No crop is what it looked like 10,000 years ago...humans re-plant the seeds from the best plants (over and over and over)...they never planted the seeds the next season around from the crappy plants. Over a long period of time we'd call this an evolutionary phenomenon and just because it took a long time doesn't mean these crops were not bio-engineered by humans. Corn for example used to look more like grass before the strain was bio-engineered by human selection over time.

Is it a good idea to go back before pasteurization? I know it's a big bad science word and all...but all it means is boiling the pathogens out of a substance and quickly cooling it. We've been boiling things for thousands of years too. The Chinese have been boiling wine almost forever. What's so bad about boiling the crap out of things? It saves countless lives. Milk's shelf-like becomes MONTHS instead of days after you pasteurize it.

Is it smart to go back to the days before refrigeration? People didn't always know that you had to refrigerate things or they'd spoil and go bad. In the case that you did not know...you have to keep milk in a refrigerator, or failing that, a cool wet sack. 110%.

Back before chemical fertilizers? Ammonium nitrate is a very scary couplet of words, I'll admit that. It's almost as scary a couplet of words as dihydrogen monoxide...and those words sound super scary as all heck. Although these words are just methods of writing out molecular structures, that's all. The scary sounding dihydrogen monoxide is just 2-Hydrogen and 1-oxygen. Two hydrogen and one oxygen make WATER. Yes, the stuff we drink, swim in, and shower in every darn day.

What is ammonium nitrate? It is 1 nitrogen nucleus winged by 4 closest packed hydrogen atoms plus 1 nitrogen nucleus winged by 4 closest packed oxygen atoms. It sounds like scary stuff but we've harnessed it for use in many effective ways. The most common effective way we utilize this combination of atoms is in fertilizers...they work well...they really multiply the output of crop yields big time.

Are molecules and serieses or combinations of said molecules really things to be frightened of?


Molecules n' Stuff

The whole milky way galaxy we live in is made up of mainly the following shits:

Known Atoms: 5%
(of which..Hydrogen: 93%, Helium: 6%, Oxygen, Carbon, Iron, etc.: 1%)

"Dark" / ?Unknown? Atoms: 95%
(Energies, atoms, matter, and other shit that we don't know what it is)*

That's it, that 5% of the elements in the universe is the stuff we have figured out how to work with. You can't be scared of these words, they are literally our tools as humans in this galaxy to work with. It's like a carpenter being scared of the word "hammer" or a fisherman being scared of the word "fishin' pole" or a farmer being scared of the word "watering can." These atomic particles are the tools we know how to manipulate and use...we cannot be afraid of these words.


*Note: Dark matter is a pretty wild topic and it's not a good idea to venture into whilst writin' 'bout farming. If it's hard to visualize what they mean by this term....try and think of like a glove that you turn inside out...a right hand glove will now fit on the left hand. Right? The glove is still the same glove but it no longer has the same use as it previously did. It is now the opposite of itself. We know we can turn atoms and energies inside-out (so to speak) but we don't know how to go about turning energy inside-out and identifying dark energy. I think.


"Organic" Movement

I can't even list how many people I know who are serious into this organic business. It's this back to simple times...back to the earth...back to the sun...back to who fucking knows where bull-datum what-have-you. It's an anti-science "back to the land" sort of mentality that seems odd.

A key term in the organic movement seems to be "As God Intended" and has a real amish sort of vibe to it. They think God (an imaginary bozo by the way) doesn't want humans to use all the advancements we have made into agriculture. This God doesn't care that humans have to figure out how to feed 7+ billion dudes n' chick n' travesties...he doesn't seem to care about that pressing issue at all. It seems this God character just doesn't want us to use pasteurization or ammoniun nitrate as fertilizer...and that's about all he/she/it is concerned with.

Look, if there is a "God" jabroni up there in fantasy land like you weasels wonderful people believe...why wouldn't he/she/it want us to feed all humans on earth? Why wouldn't he/she/it want us to harness the tools he/she/it gave us to do that?

This God gave us hydrogen (a full fuck ton of it), some helium, a bit of oxygen, and some other junk...and if you truly believe this "as God intended" business then wouldn't God WANT YOU to understand how to alter molecular structures? Would not He/She/It INTEND for you to harness the molecular tools he intrusted into this galaxy we're in?

Es Tu...God?

I say "he/she/it" to refer to this "God" concept people believe in because it's unclear what this concept is. For all I know it could very well be a Transvestite-God up there, wherever the fuck "up there" even is, considering there is no "up" and "down" on this rotating spherical orb flying through the milky way galaxy we're all currently on.

Maybe God is a Transvestite or maybe not, whatever, who cares what an imaginary thing is anyway?

God Shmod.


Is it Green or Is it Something Completely Different?

For the rest of the Organoes who don't believe in it for a God Shmod reason...what's their deal? They tend to think of the organic movement as a "green" thing...green meaning a movement which is saving the environment.

I'm not sure green is the right color to invoke to rightly represent organic farming. Does not treating a diseased cow with modern medicine invoke the color of green? No, diseased cows don't make me think of kermit-esque things. Does fertilizing with animal cackie make me think of the color green? No, it makes me think of the color shit.

Free ranging cows pooping all day long...the poop running into the local river....the river getting infested with E-Coli. Wow...that doesn't exactly sound too green to me. No way.

See: http://www.nrdc.org/water/pollution/ffarms.asp

You want to really have a nitrate overdose? Forget the chemical fertilizers you're so scared of...think about cow shit fermenting in the ground water. Does that sounds "green" to you? Because it sounds like SHIT to me. One hundred thousand square miles of caca ground water sounds like a whole lot of SHIT.

I know a lot of the holistic/naturopathic/homeopathic hippie community is into drinking their pee pee and all that...but not even hippies have a positive policy on shit. Nobody likes shit. Nobody. Gimme a break. It stinks and it smells.

Science/Efficiency Approach

What about trying to maximize land-use in the most organized of fashions to efficiently produce the largest possible amount of output?

If science produces a strain of rice that has 2x the nutrients and energy (kj) of a previous strain of rice...then why wouldn't we want to start planting that one? Why wouldn't we want a strain of rice germ that could give the eater of the rice 2x the nutrients and energy?

If science finds a safe way to stop bugs from eating and killing the crops...why not use it? I recently heard that guy Christopher Evan Welch (RIP) state that cicada bugs can wipe out an entire crop of sesame seeds in French Indochina. Why would we want to lose thousands of square miles of crops to fucking cicada bugs? Why would we want that to happen? Are you people really that scared of pesticide residue? Then wash your vegetables and fruits before consuming them. That's all it takes.

If science can extend the shelf life of dairy products by 12 times as long by pasteurizing and refrigerating them...then what's the big deal? Our milk lasts longer before turning sour and bad. What's wrong with that?

Is it just me? Does the science approach to farming and attempting to feed 7+ billion people sound like a better approach than the olden days approach?

Conclusion

Look, I love Harvest Moon...I found it to be a very relaxing video game. The simple life of gettin' up and watering plants, and combing my animals with a brush, and giving wild berries to girls in town is a very easy going alternate/fake life that is fun to mentally wash-over into from time to time.

That's just a video game though, in reality we cannot feed 7+ billion people on earth by leisurely farming like that kid in that game does. The organic movement thinks we can operate like this "olden days" style...but it is not possible. We cannot go at it all amish and expect results. It won't work, it 100% won't work. Global staple crop output must be maximized at all times to ensure people are being fed.

The "olden days" style wasn't like our depictions of it. You lived for about 31 years back then, more children died in childbirth than survived, the streets were covered in shit, a new war broke out every day, a new murderous disease strain broke out every week, and slavery accounted for almost all human labor. That's the reality of what it was like back then...it wasn't all bells and frills like on Fucking Road to Fucking Avonlea (sorry this is a very Canadian-specific reference). Um, it wasn't all hayfields and longstockings like it was on Little Fucking House on the Little Fucking Prairie!

There's things about the organic movement that seriously scare me. I notice the same people who believe in this......are the same people who believe in magic, and believe in Gods or Allahs or Wiccas or something, and believe in naturopathic medicine, the same people who don't vaccinate their children, and the same people who believe in chem trails and the whackiest of conspiracy theories...

...it's almost like a universal human rejection of science. The one thing that can help us and save us is the thing people hate the most. I think that's what I find odd about it.

The Greatest of People who are not Presently in the Baseball Hall of Fame

I write a lot about Expos stuff...because I miss them. I don't want to be bias though so I'm going to write a baseball piece about non-Expo related matters for a change.

I don't follow much baseball any longer (after 2004) but if it was from 1986 until 2004 then I know a lot about that era. Also, with internet these days it's becoming easier and easier to look into past eras (data logs, video logs, newspaper articles, etc.)

Alright, so other than Timmy Raines, here's a quick look at some other great mans that are not in the Hall of Legendary Fame.

Alan Trammell

I was more into the National League back int the day but I followed AL too. Two guys that were fixtures in the AL back in my day were a tandem of middle infielders in Detroit. The second baseman was Sweet Lou Whitaker and the shortstop was Alan Trammell.

Aside from Cal Ripken Jr., Trammell was the premier shortstop in the AL during the eighties and into the nineties. Over in the NL the main guy was Ozzie Smith. Let's look at these players career stat lines, even though Gold Gloves are an arbitrary judge-voted stat I will still include them. First look at the stat lines without the bias of knowing who's name is next to the stats:


Player A: .767 OPS, 1231 Runs Scored, 1003 RBI, 236/345 Stolen Bases, 4 Golden Gloves (in 9376 plate appearances)

Player B: .788 OPS, 1645 Runs Scored, 1695 RBI, 36/75 Stolen Bases, 2 Golden Gloves (in 12883 plate appearances)


Player C: .666 OPS, 1257 Runs Scored, 793 RBI, 580/728 Stolen Bases, 13 Golden Gloves (in 9396 plate appearances)


Players B and C are in the Hall of Fame, yet player A is not. The stats denote the following:

A: Trammell
B: Ripken
C: Smith

Now, I think defense is a huge part of the game and I think Ozzie Smith was a great player...(but, let me finish)...there's no way anyone can say that Ozzie Smith was a better player than Alan Trammell under any circumstances. I love Ozzie, but, he was a gimmicky guy, he'd take the field by doing a series of acrobatic flips and tumbles...

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6-BgGHQt24)

I admit this was a fan favorite gimmick and totally awesome but doing parlor tricks doesn't make you win more games. If people were voting for the Barnum and Bailey Circus Hall of Fame then I could understand why Ozzie Smith would be a first balloter while Alan Trammell is left out, but this is not the circus Hall of Fame, it's the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Smith and Trammell have similar plate appearances and played in the exact same era (albeit in opposite leagues), there is no conceivable way that Ozzie Smith is a first ballot inductee while Trammell  doesn't even get in. This is kind of absurd.

I dunno, maybe Trammell should have done a magic show or a couple of card tricks prior to taking the field to ensure the voters liked him better. Having an OPS over 100 points higher won't make you better than the Wizard of Oz, you needed a gimmick dude.


Mike Marshall

This one is cheating a bit because Mike Marshall did pitch for the Expos but either way Mike should be in.

Marshall pitched for 9 different teams in his career. He started with the Tigers then quickly went to Seattle, Houston, and then to Montreal...he pitched for 4 different teams in his first 3 years in the bigs. Why? Mike earned the label of "non-conformist" early on in his career and was not the type of guy coaches and management wanted around.

Mike Marshall has an interesting back story. He was a Man of the Science and he took a strange approach to pitching that most would not have considered. He took a fully full-on scientific approach to pitching. The physics and kinetics or the movements the arm makes while trying to achieve the right speed/movement/break on pitches are understandable to the human brain that wishes to observe them. Knowing the biology of the human arm will also help you understand how to manipulate it and operate it in a way that will not cause excessive damage to the arm.

Marshall perfected the pitch called the "Screw Ball" with his scientific approach to pitching. The pitch is basically a breaking ball that breaks the OPPOSITE direction of the throwing arm (a right handed pitcher would throw a pitch that broke away to the right of his arm instead of to the left).

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7DcddkBtos)

I respect Men of The Science

His early coaches in Detroit, Seattle, and Houston told Mike not to throw this crazy ass science pitch because they viewed it as being retarded. Umpires and opposing coaches accused him of cheating or using a substance (spit, vassaline, root cream oil, etc.) to break the ball like that.

Marshall didn't want to stop throwing the pitch which he believed wasn't retarded and he knew wasn't cheating. This refusal won him the label of "non-conformist" throughout the league and almost got him blackballed by baseball.

The fourth team Marshall wound up with in his first 3 major league years was the recently added Montreal Expos franchise. Still in the expansion years and losing game after game, coach Gene Mauch told Marshall that he didn't give a shit what kind of pitch Marshall wanted to throw because the team wasn't going to be in contention in 1970 anyway.

Mike freely developed his scientific take on the screw ball and by 1972 was pitching over 100 innings out of the bullpen for the Expos while putting up ERAs of 1.78 (not bad). He went on to put up similar stats out of the pen for the Dodgers and even won the Cy Young award in 1974.

People who watch baseball now a days have to understand that pitcher use was different in these bygone years. Now a days a starter does 5 innings, then a middle man comes in to do 2 innings, then a set up guy comes in for the 8th, and finally a closer in the 9th. Even in a low scoring game of 2-1...we see a team use up to 5 pitchers.

Back in the day it was 4-man starting rotations, you had one or two good pitchers in the pen, and a bunch of bums to pitch in blowouts and meaningless/nothing-on-the-line games. Healthy starters used to get close to 400 innings pitched per year and some relievers used to get well over 100 innings per year.

The "best" relievers now a days are judged by the Saves stat...yet it is probably the most gimmicky and pointless stat ever. How many games are won and lost in the eight innings prior to the ninth? Is the ninth inning some sort of magic inning where if you keep the opposing team to a goose-egg in that inning you automatically win the game? No. There's nothing more special about shutting a team's hitters down in the 9th inning than the 4th inning or any other inning.

People fawn over 50 saves in a season from guys like Hoffman or Gagné...but some pitchers who achieved that only pitched fucking 55 innings all season long. What's next? The left handed specialist who pitches to 50 batters all year but has a 1.50 ERA is an all-star? I don't think so.

Marshall would work in close to 100 games a year, finish out 75 of them, get 12-15 wins, and rack up 20 to 30 saves. Mike pitched over 200 innings out of the bullpen the year he won the Cy Young. The year reliever Eric Gagné won the Cy Young out of the pen he pitched in only 82 innings and won only 2 games. Trevor Hoffman saved 53 games one year...but only pitched in 73 innings all season.

Can a reliever from that era make the Hall? Yes, Goose Gossage did...and truth be told Goose's career stats are pretty similar to Mike Marshall's and Goose never won a Cy Young in his career. Plus Mike Marshall was a Man of the Science too.

Goose is in, but Mike only received 1.5% of the vote when his name came up. Odd, in a way.


Dick Allen

Mike Marshall was labelled and stigmatized as being a "non-conformist" and trouble maker, another player, Dick Allen, was perceived under much worse labels. Dick's name around the league was never in good standing and it really hurt him when Hall of Fame voting came up.

His back story is interesting too and his label as a trouble maker was undeserved as well. Dick came up through the Phillies system at a time where Frank Thomas (no not THAT one, this Frank Thomas was an ugly white guy) was a fan favorite and recently added to Phillies organization. Frank was an old veteran guy of 35 years old and he was pretty old school. He'd make fun of the black guys on the team and the way they shook hands (soul shakin') by pretending to be down and offering up a hand for a soul shake...but then Frank would grab the kid's thumb and pull it back as hard as he could.

Dick Allen even as a "kid" was a pretty big dude, we're talking a low-center of gravity 5'11 187 pounds. When he was coming up in 1964 he didn't really care for the way Frank Thomas was abusing the trust of the sacred soul shake with the brothers on the team. He told the 6 foot 3 / 200 pounder Frank Thomas right to his fucking face that if he pulled that shit again with the soul shake that he'd get him back. 

Truth be told, Frank kept pulling the stunt and lo...Dick Allen got mad and apparently Thomas hit him with a bat...leading to a violent fight.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uWvkxj-C64)

As told by that historian, Thomas was released and Allen was forbidden from talking to the press about the incident. The Philadelphia papers framed the altercation with Allen as the antagonist and Thomas as the protagonist. The fans in Philly took to booing and hating on Dick Allen every time he took the field in his home park of Connie Mack Stadium.

The label of Dick being a trouble maker took shape at that moment and it never let up. Allen had an OPS of OVER 900 in his rookie year (earning the rookie of the year award in 1964)...yet was the most hated player in Philadelphia history. That's kind of fucking ludicrous. It's abso-ludicrous.

Dick went on to have an OVER 900 OPS his whole entire career...finishing with a .912 career OPS. Yet his max Hall of Fame voting % only climbed to 18% at its highest point. Maybe he needed a gimmick too like Ozzie Smith...oh wait, he even had a gimmick.

Hey, listen to Dick's sweet singin' voice from his album. If you don't feel whimsical and begin remembering fond memories of a past love while listening to this song then you probably have no emotions: 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJDDs7ohpJk)

...and when Deceeeeember came and my dreams still echoed your name...

Jeez...he had a killer career and a gimmick, what do the voters want? No one can ever tell. You can see from his voice that he's a soft and caring guy. Obviously swimming in the fish bowl of hate which was Connie Mack stadium in the mid-sixties was difficult for him and the jeers didn't exactly roll off his back.

Dick took to writing things in the dirt while in the field. People saw this as a sort of protest from a trouble maker...but it wasn't that. He would write things like his mother's name while he played and listened to the boos...or sometimes he'd even write "boo" in the dirt.

This wasn't a trouble maker, this was a soft hearted guy trying to deal with constant emotional stress. His dirt scribbles were just something to regain his composure and to lean on. That's why he'd write something like his mother's name in the field..to lean on it.

Remember that Simpsons where Homer explains why he has no pictures of Maggie in his home? It was because they were where he needed them most...at his horrible job. The pictures were something for Homer to lean on at a place where he hated being. Dick Allen's scribbles were more along those lines than a trouble maker trying to provoke the fans as it was perceived back then.

Conclusion 

Trammell, Marshall, and Allen were really good at baseball.