As the parent of a toddler, I’m constantly learning new things. The most valuable lesson I’ve learned of late is that you simply must never play any song for a 2-year-old that you’re not prepared to listen to another 500 times, and that you must never, ever play any of the Mets’ various anthems.

“Long Island! New Jersey!” shrieks a voice from my stereo a good dozen times a day. “Let’s go Mets! That’s the cheer all over New York town!” Not in my house.

Mrs. Marchman is prepared to set Shea Stadium on fire in retributionfortheMets’musicalatrocities. I can only be thankful that no one around the house has taken a shine to “Our Team, Our Time” (whose lyrics include “David Wright, Jose Reyes / Making sure you’re not safe / Just in case — Carlos Delgado / He’s at first base!”)

On the 397th tour through the Mets’ fight song, it occurred to me that the simplest way to regain sanity would be to make a playlist of baseball songs that are actually good and press this upon my offspring. This is more difficult than you might think. Of all the songs ever written about baseball, at least nine of 10 are anthems by middle-aged heartland rockers mourning their lost youth in maudlin terms. I’ll give a thousand timesyesto”OurTeam, OurTime” before a single yes to either Bruce Springsteen or John Fogerty.

This leaves us with what I have scientifically identified as the five songs about baseball that are really worth hearing, presented here as suggestions as a way to brighten a steamy August or subdue a recalcitrant child.

5) ‘LET’S GO GO WHITE SOX’
Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers

Fight song of the famed Go Go Sox of Luis Aparicio and Co., this anthem actually didn’t catch on when released in 1959, probably because Captain Stubby and the Buccaneers sound like glee club rejects drunk on aftershave and running away from a marching band. Its goofball charms have, though, made it a favorite at Chicago’s Sox Park over the last few years, and there is absolutely nothing to be said against being soused and singing as loudly as possible, “Let’s go, go, go White Sox / We’re with you all the way / We’re glad to have you / Out here in the Middle West” while screechy organs blare and snares are rolled. Captain Stubby may just have been 50 years ahead of his time.

4) ‘DID YOU EVER SEE JACKIE ROBINSON HIT THAT BALL?’
Count Basie

Count Basie is one of the towering figures of American culture, and if this isn’t one of his finest moments, it’s still awfully nice. A 1949 novelty, this could be mistaken for an early rock ‘n’ roll song if it weren’t for the impossibly nasty trumpet solo Sweets Edison tosses off as if it were nothing, and that heavy locomotive beat that no one but Basie could ever quite pull off. It’s also just one great baseball song. (“Did you see Jackie Robinson hit that ball? / Did he hit it? / Yeah, and that ain’t all / He stole home.”) Working in Satchel Paige, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, and Larry Doby, this number is purely joyous. Nearly 60 years later, you can still feel the tangible pride of black America in the achievements of the pioneers who integrated the game.

3) ‘JOE DIMAGGIO DONE IT AGAIN’
Billy Bragg and Wilco

Now here is a song with a provenance. Originally written by Woody Guthrie — another one of the truly great figures of American history — it wasn’t performed until English folkster Billy Bragg and pretentious heartland rockers Wilco recorded it, along with many other unrecorded Guthrie lyrics, as part of their “Mermaid Avenue” project. I approached it with trepidation: Wilco front man Jeff Tweedy is essentially a somewhat less shameless John Cougar Mellencamp. But the thing is wonderful, all banjos and hooting and plain harmonies, straight out of the “Pretty Boy Floyd” line. “All three fielders jumped their best / Trying to climb that high board fence / They all growed whiskers on their chins / Joe DiMaggio’s done it again,” hollers Bragg. I’d pay a week’s salary to hear what Guthrie would have done with it. Paul Simon can croon all he wants about lonely eyes and whatnot, but a real genius beat him by about 25 years to turning cranky old DiMaggio into a folk hero.

2) ‘A FRIENDLY GAME OF BASEBALL’
Main Source

If you have any ear for hip-hop and you’ve never heard Main Source’s 1991 album “Breaking Atoms,” you really need to do so: People are making money shamelessly stealing this album’s ideas to this very day. One of the highlights is also one of hip-hop’s great contributions to baseball. “A Friendly Game of Baseball” is an unhinged protest against police brutality that takes the conceit that the whole world is a ballgame. The group gets surprisingly clever about it over a disorienting beat courtesy of the legendary Large Professor. The conceit breaks down quickly — if you figure out what “a walking gun with a shell in his hand is their mascot” means — but this remains a classic.

1) ‘PIAZZA, NEW YORK CATCHER’
Belle and Sebastian

This song would be no. 1 in any circumstance, as it has the single greatest lyric ever penned about baseball: “Piazza / New York catcher / Are you straight or are you gay?” Stuart Murdoch — having taken in a Mets game around the time that this burning issue was a source of controversy, preemptive and otherwise — clearly knows nothing about baseball, which makes things all the better. Anyone with his talent who wants to pilfer old Bob Dylan changes while singing, “The catcher hits for .318 and catches every day / The pitcher puts religion first and rests on holidays,” can only be applauded. What is he talking about? Who knows, but it’s no surprise that a Scot (one imagines him fleeing in terror from foul balls) can somehow sum up everything bittersweet and joyous about the game better than a hundred heartland rockers singing a thousand anthems about a million lost youths. Murdoch needs to come back to the States and catch up on the tabloid coverage of A-Rod.

tmarchman@nysun.com