how every met victory comes with a punch in the gut

i'm a lifelong mets fan, through mostly bad and good, and i could not be any more excited about the prospects of 2006. not only did we get carlos delgado and billy wagner - thereby significantly upgrading our two weak areas - but we did so without touching our young nucleus of david wright, jose reyes and lastings milledge - and aaron heilman, if you want to include him, too.

that's so important and valuable, to have a plan and to follow through with it. plans elicit hope.

so i'm geeked about all this and i've even kept my schedule for next october completely free.

and then i read that our co-owner, jeff wilpon, who is widely considered to be a jackass, basically told delgado that he will not be able to continue with his personal protest against the war in iraq (and other things) by forcing him to stand during the national anthem.

by the way, i would say that forcing someone to do something just sounds so completely unamerican and against everything what we're fighting for over there, but then again, someone please explain to me again what the hell are we fighting for?

i don't disagree with having to follow the rules of your employee when they're paying you. but as long as you don't embarass yourself or the team, what harm is there in this? he's been nothing but classy and thoughful about it.

still, delgado replied with ""i'm employee no. 21. i'm not going to put myself in front of the team. i'm here to follow orders." well played, carlos. classy.

so that problem has been diverted.

what truly irks me, however, is that wilpon is saying these team rules have come down from manager willie randolph and general manager omar minaya.

but that's not really true, according to newsday.

"I'd rather have a man who's going to stand up and say what he believes," manager Willie Randolph said. "We have a right as Americans to voice that opinion."

So why would the Mets cite some unwritten team rule that nobody would claim as his? Wilpon said it was Randolph's and Omar Minaya's rule, though neither the manager nor the GM were around Shea for the post-9/11 playing of the song. Minaya said, "This is from ownership."

so wilpon, a white man, doesn't want to tell his puerto rican employee what to do or what to think, so he lies and tells that the order instead comes from a dominican general manager and his african-american manager.

now that's classy.