It throbbed. It pulsated. It got down with the beat, not to mention the Bear. It lit up like crazy, so much so that they shot off every last firework within reach. Maybe this is what the Ritchie Family was referring to in 1976 when they paid homage to the best disco in town [1].
Citi Field grooved on Tuesday night as Pete Alonso [2] went clubbing and we all went along with him. We were up on our feet when Pete belted the 253rd home run of his Met career, which instantly became the most of any Met career. Our third-inning response was so nice, the Polar Bear saw fit to do it twice. Following Pete’s sixth-inning blast, the club record therefore ticked up to 254.
You know who holds it. And you know who couldn’t hold back its appreciation? This crowd.
Yeah, we were into Pete Alonso passing Darryl Strawberry [3] for the franchise long ball mark. And we were into Alonso passing himself to establish another franchise long ball mark. We were into Francisco Alvarez [4] going deep two times, Brandon Nimmo [5] homering with two men on, and Brett Baty [6] icing the cake with a homer of his own.
Oh, by the way, the Mets won this curtain call carnival in which they slugged like they forgot that they had forgotten how to slug for the last week and change. They scored 13 runs in all, every last one of them with two outs. They allowed five to whoever they played (the largely irrelevant Braves), which appeared to be a problem when the score was briefly 5-5, but the bats were out for the home team. So were the fans.
[7]We came to praise Peter, who out-Berry’d Straw.
This was a night to overlook that Clay Holmes [8] couldn’t escape the fourth inning, and that the Cincinnati win over Philadelphia represented a mug half-full situation, as we’re five behind the Phillies for the NL East lead but only two ahead of the Reds for the final Wild Card slot. It was even a night to overlook that this Met win, as rousing as it was, was their first in eight games. We eventually got the pitching necessary to put 0-7 behind us, thanks to Gregory Soto [9] coming in way earlier than usual (the fourth) and Justin Hagenman [10] staying in way longer than could have been forecast in a game that wound up a 13-5 romp [11] (Justin no-hitting Atlanta from the sixth through the ninth earned him one of those delightful “no, really” saves).
Pitching, however, could not be the theme of the night when Pete Alonso was crashing and remaking history. When he swung off Spencer Strider — now there’s a swing-off [12] that means something — and the result was laser-tagged until it landed in the visitors’ bullpen, it dawned on those of us fortunate enough to be in attendance what we just saw. We saw seven seasons of Alonso culminate where we projected he’d land as soon as we got a load of what he could do as a rookie. We saw the Straw Man wave him into the top spot on the Met home run chart. Darryl hit career home run No. 155 on May 3, 1988, to take the all-time Met lead from Dave Kingman [13]. It was noteworthy, to be sure, but the lead story from Shea that evening was David Cone making his first start of the year and bulling his way into the rotation to stay, shutting out the Braves (them again), 8-0. Pitching was the theme of that night. Pitching was often the theme while Darryl was adding 97 more home runs to his record between 1988 and 1990. Pitching has been the theme of the Mets most of their life. Darryl’s 252nd home run, off Greg Maddux of the Cubs on September 23, 1990, supported eight winning innings from Dwight Gooden. When you’re hitting home runs and your pitchers are the likes of Cone building a 20-win season and Gooden heading for 19-7, your home runs are only part of the story.
[14]True for 37 seasons, not so much any longer.
Pete Alonso won the Rookie of the Year award in 2019, the same year Jacob deGrom earned his second consecutive Cy Young. From there, it seems the paths of Met hitters and Met pitchers have diverged. Pitching is something we never have enough of in the 2020s. Hitting (recent trends notwithstanding) is more the Met signature in this generation. It is, after all, the Polar Generation. Drink it in, drink it in, drink it in [15].
That we did. Pete choosing the second Tuesday in August at home to whack his record-breaker and record-extender was thoughtful, considering that more or less every second Tuesday in August at home is the date the Princes make to meet up with our favorite father-and-son combo, Rob and Ryder Chasin. We first met the Chasins when Ryder was thirteen (it’s a whole story [16]). We went to our first game with them when Ryder was on the verge of turning fourteen. Ryder will soon be twenty-nine. Along with the sustained excellence of Pete Alonso, the Chasin Game at almost precisely the same juncture every August is, certainly to me, Citi Field’s greatest ongoing success story.
We shared Pete and the new power generation’s success with more than 39,000 this Tuesday night. The Mets reminded us why we willingly flock to see them. They can’t always promise history, let alone victory. But when they deliver, man, just keep playing that groove.
And when you need to sit out a set, hustle on over to your podcast provider of choice and take in the 200th episode of Jeff Hysen’s National League Town, to which I returned to sit in for a spell this week, because who can resist being on hand for a milestone?