The menschiest Met ever.

We hail Mets first baseman Carlos Delgado’s choice not to stand for “God Bless America” because for years we haven’t been standing for the National Anthem. For good reasons.

First, the Star Spangled Banner is, hands down, the most unsingable, un-hummable, worst nightmare of a song ever written. Worse than any Paul MaCartney song. Why Congress didn’t scrap it years ago and replace it with “Toxic” by Britney Spears is beyond us.

Second, we remain seated as a lesson to all the Fascists-in-training; the lesson being that the foundation of this Republic is two-fold: equal opportunity and freedom of expression (i.e. the First Amendment). If we want to sit during the national anthem, dammit, then we have the right to sit. The First Amendment, everyone seems to forget, protects unpopular speech and expression, including Nazis marching through Skokie (a Jewish neighborhood near Chicago), artists who paint the Virgin Mary with cow dung, gays tongue-kissing in public, the TV show Friends, and Carlos Delgado showing his opposition to the war in Iraq by not standing for God Bless America.

From an article by Karl Taro Greenfield in this week’s Sports Illustrated:

Delgado says that his refusal to stand for the singing of God Bless America in 2004 and ‘05 to protest the Iraq War was simply a logical extention of the values that he and his family had long held. ‘I think it’s the stupidest war ever,’ he told The Toronto Star in ‘04. “Who are you fighthing against? You’re just getting ambushed now.’

Since then — big surprise — Delgado has gotten booed by legions of knuckleheads (Yankee fans) who would no more volunteer to fight in Iraq than we’d go back to teaching junior high school.

At last, a public figure with cajones, like his hero Roberto Clemente.

Let ‘em boo, Carlos, let ‘em boo.