The Polar Bear had a homecoming in Flushing Monday night. Except for the uniform he wore, it was like he never left. The uniform he wore indicated he did leave. Thus, the need for a homecoming.
Pete Alonso [1] of the Baltimore Orioles was welcomed back to Citi Field as Pete Alonso of the New York Mets. Still ours where it counts most. Who among us thinks of Tom Seaver of the Cincinnati Reds or Mike Piazza of the San Diego Padres? They were greeted in prodigal fashion as necessary. In the moments they stepped out of the wrong dugout, they wore strange color combinations. Close your eyes decades later and they’re Mets forever. So it will be with Pete someday. So it is when we are moved to think of him in the present.
Except when we open our eyes, he’s modeling orange and black, leaving us a little blue. Only for now [2], as they sang in Avenue Q. Along the Seaver Way of the mind, he looks the way he should, playing for the right team, hitting all his home runs for us. At actual 41 Seaver Way on Monday, he went 0-for-3 with a walk for the Orioles and was adored like he’d gone deep 264 times across seven years. For us.
I would have liked that old LFGMer to have hit a home run on Monday night. It would have been the 300th of his transferable illustrious career. I didn’t really want him to hit it off Jonah Tong [3], as I was not prepared to sacrifice the continued development of one of our young, prospective aces on the altar of Polar sentimentality. I also wasn’t crazy about the idea of fluffing up the ERA of any of our tenuously competent relievers. Had David Stearns taken the mound, Pete could have hit it 700 feet and it wouldn’t have traveled far enough. Nor, judging by the anti-POBO chants that segued seamlessly from those that rang out in favor of Alonso, could have Stearns.
[4]Still waiting to unlock milestone celebrations for Pete and Francisco.
As was, Gunnar Henderson — from our perspective the wrong Bird — sent a baseball flying over the Citi Field fence. A.J. Ewing [5] hit the tenth homer of his season/career, which is a mini-milestone, I guess. I had been hoping for Francisco Lindor [6] to match Pete’s 300th, but the big number was not on tap for either of our icons. Henderson’s shot, in the eighth off Dedniel Nuñez, proved decisive in Baltimore’s 2-1 victory [7]. The only other run all night was unearned, off Tong in the second inning. Over the course of six, Jonah was Tong Terrific: only four hits, just that one walk to the Homecoming King, six strikeouts. He was done in by a passed ball and a weird hop in the vicinity of first base that befuddled Brett Baty. Maybe Alonso would have smothered it.
Nearly one Peteless year complete, and he sure looks great in absentia. He looked pretty spectacular in reality, even if Stearns’s hesitation to commit long-term to his slugging first baseman didn’t seem altogether ludicrous while the parties were going their separate ways. Pete did hit for power like no other Met ever. He continues to do so, even as an Oriole, even as his 32nd birthday approaches. Yet Pete was not the nimblest of defenders at his position. But it was his position. He had played it all his life and you didn’t have to wonder who would occupy it as long as he was around. Also, he was aging. Aren’t we all?
It took two to disentangle. The president of baseball operations, with ownership’s blessing, decided there were better ways to craft a Mets team in the season that was directly ahead (they were wrong) and down the road (we’ll see). Pete Alonso decided he could hit refresh and home runs for a lucrative contract in Baltimore. To this point, the Polar Bear has proved a prophet. The Orioles remain a fringe playoff contender with two weeks to go in 2026, mainly because most of the American League is the 1973 NL East writ large. Pete doesn’t seem unhappy with his choice. He also seemed genuinely touched to be reminded, via tribute video [8] and repeated ovations (scored by a dollop of his walkup music [9]), how much he meant to those who never wanted to see him go.
Had Pete stayed, would have he produced the way Pete always produced, the way Pete’s been producing? There’s no reason to think not, Met luck aside. Our offense was often bountiful with Produce Pete from 2019 through 2025. And had Pete stayed, would have Pete Alonso and the 2026 Mets, crafted with him at the heart of the operation, not been mathematically eliminated with a dozen games lingering on the schedule, as they were Monday night? The Mets are 69-81. Sub in Pete for the five minutes of Jorge Polanco; the yeoman contributions of Jared Young; and whatever Baty and Mark Vientos brought in the way of run production and (ahem) run prevention at the previously Polar grounds of first base, and are the Mets substantially better than 69-81? Are they hot on the heels of the 82-68 Padres, holder of the third National League Wild Card? Hypotheticals and counterfactuals are never wrong if you don’t want them to be, but who knows?
Hindsight’s having a moment [10]. Pete’s current numbers are characteristic of what he posted while posting up every day here. The Mets’ numbers flatlined almost immediately without him. Ergo, what a mistake it was not making every effort to retain him. It’s possible hindsight is simply opening a letter mailed to it by foresight last December. Pete’s under contract in Baltimore for four more years. Maybe the Orioles will be itching to let the Bear run free before they’re over. Maybe some minor league slugger with a catchy nickname and a knack for acronyms, will win our hearts and minds anew, and the 2027 or 2028 Mets will mash and mesh, leaving Pete Alonso as a pleasant memory always, but a player who, it turned out, needed to be moved on from in order for us to move forward.
In the meantime, he wears a strange uniform and jogs out of the wrong dugout. We still see the Met within. We don’t disentangle so easily.