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SATURDAY

It’s easy to forget that sports stars are human. After all, aren’t we paying them to perform? And because their main assets are their bodies, we might even assume that these hulking results of weight training and natural selection spend too much time conditioning to have any real use for their brains. When an athlete, such as current Florida Marlins First baseman Carlos Delgado, refuses to stand on the dugout steps for the now-regular seventh-inning performance of “God Bless America” because he “doesn’t believe in the war,” it tends to make everyday folks a little pissed. Why? Not because they think sports stars aren’t entitled to their opinions, but because some believe that the players should just shut up and entertain the masses. Dave Zirin’s latest, What’s My Name, Fool?: Sports and Resistance in the United States, chronicles the Delgado incident and other examples of jocks who’ve also developed a skill for critical thinking. Ask him to name an all-star team when he reads at 6 p.m. at Politics and Prose, 5015 Connecticut Ave. NW. Free. (202) 364-1919. (Mike Kanin)