PORT STREET LUCIE — No matter how many times Pete Alonso insists he keeps the baseball and business elements of his life separate, going to the ballpark this year is about something else. It’s Walk He’s Ear Shuffle. We’ve seen it eat some players whole and elevate others to incredible heights.
We saw Aaron Judge have perhaps the best walk year in history two years ago, leading up to 62 home runs and a $360 million contract. And we’ve seen that Alonso has a knack for calling and raising judges’ bets. Five years ago, he set the all-time record for most home runs by a rookie. He’s betting on himself now, just as Judge once did.
The Mets, perhaps subconsciously, are reminded of the rest every day inside their spring training clubhouse at Clover Field. Surrounding the large room and above each locker are giant black-and-white photographs of alumni mainstays Dwight Gooden and Jerry Koosman, Mike Piazza and David Wright in their youthful glory. .
Directly above Alonso’s locker? Darryl Strawberry. Just to the right of the straw? Tom Seaver. If you believe the Mets re-proved George Santayana’s old baseball adage (those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it) when they let Strawberry walk 14 years after trading Seaver, they just… I can’t help but wonder if he enjoys the torture. It has all the symbolism itself.
For now, Alonso is at Metropolitan University. He continues to be exceptional inside, in the field and in the batting order. He still speaks in the same wide-eyed way he spoke as a kid when he transferred from Florida to the big club in the spring of 2019, and continued to hit all summer long, eventually hitting a rookie record with 53 home runs. Reached. Since baseball first began in 1869, he not only had explosive hitting every day, he looked like he was having fun every day.
I’m still looking at you.
Asked Thursday what it feels like when a baseball hits a screw and the ball flies toward the second deck, Alonso said, “It’s a feeling in your whole body.” First, it rotates around the sun (or moon). “It’s like an adrenaline rush hitting a ball like that in a packed stadium during a game. It’s addictive and I want to do it for a really long time.”
Alonso has repeatedly stated that he hopes that deadline means Queens, it means Citi Field, and that he hopes Wright becomes a Met for Life eternal All-Star, which only Wright has actually been. On the wall of the clubhouse, just to Seaver’s right, stands Ed Kranepool, the Mets’ other first baseman, who appeared in every innings and 1,853 games of his career in a Mets uniform.
Alonso would need 1,169 games to catch Kranepoel. That’s about seven and a half years. I doubt there are many, if any, Mets fans who wouldn’t sign up right away. Because in this day and age, he’s to Mets fans what Judge is to Yankees fans, what Jalen Brunson is to Knicks fans. He is both the face and heart of the franchise. He sells tickets, he sells hope. It’s a method that only players who hit that hard in baseball can do.
“The important thing is to win the game,” he said. “It’s like when a retirement party is held.Baseball is an interesting game that condenses so many contents.We have super young players ranging in age from 20s to 40s, yet we win the game in the bottom of the 9th inning.” And there are a lot of guys out there who act like children.”
When Alonso speaks, we see the most obvious difference between him and the ghostly apparition above his locker. By the end, Seaver had grown resentful of Mets management, especially Donald Grant, and cried bitter tears when he was traded, but would sprint to Cincinnati.
Strawberry still had two years left on his contract with the Mets, and he chose Game 1 of the 1988 NLCS to be the first to openly talk about how great it would be to play in Los Angeles. Frank Cashen took those words and made them his own, then went on to say that no baseball player — much less a strawberry — is worth $5 million, and unfortunately owns his own inedibles. provided a soundbite. Ichigo ran away.
Alonso still talks like a kid on the rise, not the veteran who made $20.5 million this year, won Rookie of the Year and the Home Run Derby twice, made the All-Star team three times and hit 192 home runs. . When he talks about the lack of memory needed to succeed in the game, he refers to the old go-to guy of Ted Lasso.
“Be a goldfish,” he said.
By the end of the season, he might be a different person. He needs 29 home runs to pass Piazza for third place on the Mets’ all-time home run rankings, and 51 home runs to pass Wright for second place. How to catch strawberries? He’ll have to hit 61 of those this year, or he’ll have to hang in there long enough to make that record his own next year, and for years to come, and maybe forever. Mets fans will be dazzled by this 61.
But they would probably prefer him to get it next year.
