Sign the petition, ditch the black jerseys. It's the right thing to do.

I’ve never been a big fan of signing protest petitions.

I think the first one I ever signed was in sixth-grade. Being 1976 and having recently studied the American Revolution, and, well, being a bunch of sixth-graders, we decided we had had it with the quality of the cafeteria food.

I don’t actually remember it being all that bad, to be honest. But we didn’t like the pairing of frozen pizza and string beans served with an ice cream scoop. Plus, we were sixth-graders.

First we passed around the aforementioned petition. And when that didn’t generate a response, we hatched a bigger plan – a one-day hot lunch boycott.

It was a glorious rebellion! Just about everybody was fired up and on board. And we even got a response.

Mr. Bosco, the cranky teacher and designated discipline hard-ass, blew a gasket, yelling in the hall that we were “all a bunch of big babies.” Score!

Then, the head of the food service department agreed to come speak to us. Score! Again!

I got to lob the first question: “Pizza and string beans. Why?”

The director humored us for a while, explaining nutritional guidelines called or a vegetable each day, and that ice cream scoops provided an easy and accurate way dispense uniform portions. He also refrained from rolling his eyes many times when it would have been justified.

There was no discernable improvement in food quality after our little rebellion, but we had fun for a week before moving on to other causes.

But I recently found a new cause. And that, my friends, is to abolish the Mets black uniforms. And I found this brilliant Website Ditch the Black that features a petition so far signed by 3,454 people.

I must say I don’t mind the road cap, with the blue bill and black crown.

And I don’t really have a beef with the shadows on the white alternate uniform and road jersey.

But the all-black jersey and the all-black – they gotta go!

The webmaster doesn’t list his name on the site, which is unfortunate because I’d love to give him the proper credit.

He makes some points about tradition and honoring team history, all of them valid and important.

But he forgot one thing. They’re evil.

Think I’m kidding? Check this out.

Case 1: Game 6, 1999 NLCS.

Kenny Bleeping Rogers faced Andruw Jones with the bases loaded and the season on the line. Except The Gambler couldn’t find home plate with a freaking GPS and Jones brought a bat with him for no apparent reason because he had no intention of swinging. Nor did he have to.

Want to guess what jersey Rogers was wearing? You got it, the black one!

As if that infamous moment wasn’t enough, consider this:

Was it Timo or the jersey?

Case 2: Game 1, 2000 World Series.

Two outs in the top of the sixth, and Timo Bleeping Perez was standing on first when Todd Zeile hit what appeared to be a two-run home run to left. Except that the ball bounced off the top of the fence and into the hands of Halle Berry-dumpee David Justice who threw it to Derek Freaking Jeter. Normally this is not a problem, since Jeter has the arm-strength of hamster.

But Timo, thinking the ball had cleared the fence and broke into a trot. And by the time he realized it had not, Jeter was able to rainbow his toss to the plate, nailing Perez and sending Verducci and Klapisch to write a whole new chapter on intangibles.

The Mets missed the opportunity to stab the Yankees in their black hearts, allowing them to come back and we never recovered.

What jersey do you think Timo was wearing that night? Yup, the black one.

Case 3: Game 3, NLCS

In a must-win game after blowing Game 2, Steve Trachsel took the bump and promptly imploded, giving up five runs in two innings. He even begged out of the game after taking a floater on the leg. The Mets never got back into the game, eventually losing in Game 7, as we all painfully know.

Of course, Trachsel was wearing the vile black jersey.

Trachsel’s not coming back, and let’s send the black jerseys packing with him.

In fact, dispatching them with a press release won’t be good enough. We need to gather them in a pile and burn them at what will be the home plate at Citi Field forever expunging them – and all the bad things they represent -- from our memories.

Do your duty and sign the petition, and let’s hope the Mets don’t get any more bright ideas, be they black jerseys or string beans served with the pizza.