Abstract

Patriot at the Bat

The article reports on Major League Baseball player Carlos Delgado of the Toronto Blue Jays and his protests against the United States-led war in Iraq. Carlos Delgado, the star first baseman of the Toronto Blue Jays, has protested the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Delgado's antiwar anger is rooted in his native Puerto Rico, where for six decades the U.S. Navy tested myriad weapons by bombing the small island of Vieques off the country's eastern coast. He has donated some $100,000 to communities and activists on Vieques and, in April 2001, together with singer Ricky Martin and boxer Felix Trinidad, took out full-page advertisements in the New York Times and the Washington Post protesting the bombing. Delgado's unobtrusive, dignified protest against the war in Iraq has drawn predictable howls from right-wing sports fans. There are some 750 players on Major League Baseball's thirty teams, and scores more managers, coaches, umpires and front-office executives. It is fair to assume that a significant number of them also think the war in Iraq is stupid, or at the very least a dubious enterprise. Yet they remain silent.