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 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, 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, 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.
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 hit the tenth homer of his season/career, which is a mini-milestone, I guess. I had been hoping for Francisco Lindor 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. 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 and repeated ovations (scored by a dollop of his walkup music), 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. 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.
I’m wondering how the current Mets team felt when they saw lines of fans heading for the exits after Pete’s last AB, with the game tied? That speaks volumes — that the current team isn’t even worth staying and watching to see if they can pull out a win from a tie. I thought that was really sad.
Maybe they thought “screw those a**holes”; they certainly would have been justified in doing so.
(I thought it was sad as well)
To say nothing of the fact that the game was tied at that point, which meant Pete might get another at-bat in extra innings. How could they leave? They might have missed exactly what they had come to see!
That game proved too small to hold all the drama attached to it. We had Pete’s return; both he and Lindor on the precipice of 300, and the Orioles still chasing a wild card. History demanded an epic and we got the Saturday afternoon matinee serial. Tune in tomorrow!
The Mets have, through no fault of their own, backloaded the drama into the season’s final month, what with the dual 300 quest, the Beltran number retirement ceremony, and the always heartbreaking 9/11 commemoration. Topping it all off on the eve of Yom Kippur is Howie Rose’s farewell on Sunday. I am growing weary, and I expect to feel wrung-out on Monday, even if I were not fasting.
Many are blaming Mets fans for booing Jonah Tong, but I don’t really think that’s what happened. Mets fans were there for Pete, and it was the Mets management that created this cognitive dissonance where to cheer for Pete and boo his opponent no longer is comfortable. I well remember, a half century later, how incredibly weird it was to be at Shea Stadium, the home park of Tom Seaver, and to see Seaver and to not quite know how to behave. Did I clap when he struck out Mets? Did I worry when he was in a jam against the Mets? Who was I actually rooting for? And why was I, still a teenage Mets fan, being placed on this impossible situation?*
It was Gary Cohen who placed this night in the exact proper context, as younger announcers and fans drew analogies to Jose Reyes and Darryl Strawberry and Mike Piazza, all of which were apt and none of which were exactly correct. Jose and Darryl basically ( although perhaps not technically)chose to leave, and both of them later regretted it and said so. Mike, as everyone knew, was at the last stages of his career, and the Mets threw him a party the last day of the prior season, with accolades and hugs and tributes all around, and allowed him to quietly take his leave over the off season ( and the fans got to put a cherry on that sundae when he next appeared at Shea).
No, this was a home grown star and icon of the franchise, basically (although perhaps not technically) forced out by management in the middle of his career, returning home to a fanbase that never got to say goodbye.
I was shocked at the “Fire Stearns” chants. I was shocked when Francisco Lindor applauded Pete coming to bat while he was actually on the field playing shortstop. Perhaps the fans have grown bolder and the players have as well, but 50 years ago the chants would have been subdued and I believe Lindor might have been given a stern look by Andy Green in the dugout. We are more open now about our feelings. The Mets as an organization embraced the homecoming, and strategically that was a smart move. Maybe if you are forced to relive history, you can at least make it easier to swallow. But I have my doubts. These things leave scars.
As for the game itself, while Tong looked great, nothing happened of note. The history of the Mets demands a moment. Maybe today.
* Kudos to SNY for unearthing faded film of August 1977 at Shea, and kudos to Gary for explicitly stating how awful those Big Red Machine-era Reds uniforms were and how Tom never looked right in them.
And I had not even thought about this, but with Howie’s retirement, Gary will be the last voice on the air who can talk about what 1969 was like. Keith and Ron can remember it, but they were not there. And it is one of those things that you can admire from afar, but unless you were there ( spiritually at least) you can never completely understand. All things must pass, and I’m very optimistic for the future of the Mets, but Howie is and was One of Us, who sat in the stands at Shea Stadium, rushed the field to get a piece of turf, and carried that memory throughout our lives. His voice cannot be replaced, any more than the Franchise and the Polar Bear can.
Stearns, in his arrogance, ripped the heart, soul, and guts out of this team — and, as with M. Donald Grant before him, I will never forgive him for it. After 60 years of Mets fandom, I haven’t been able to bring myself to watch more than a half dozen games this year.
From my perspective in Section 15, nobody was really booing Tong, Baty yes after he tripped over his own feet trying to field a ball which cost the Mets a run in a 2-1 affair. Mr. Lindor (he of his thumbs down gesture) just doesn’t get it. It was all about Pete. Last night was hard, but not as hard as Mets/Reds in ’77 with Kooz against Cincinnati’s Tom Seaver. That one was much worse. We already had almost an entire season without Pete to get used to the current reality before last night. Gracious Pete seems to be over it, and I am afraid to say it is time for us to get over it as well.
Just wait 13 years when he goes into the HOF in an Orioles cap.
Watching these 3 little pigs just makes me sick.