Pete Alonso’s homer heroics help Orioles rally by Mets in extras comes with curtain call in surreal scene
What a night for Pete Alonso and the majority of the 28,097 Mets fans on hand.
What a gut punch — or maybe a punch directed a bit lower — for the Mets.
In yet another surreal scene during a series filled with them, Alonso crushed a milestone, game-tying home run at Citi Field — and bathed in the adoration of Mets fans who had just watched him help steal a game from the team they root for.
Alonso crushed No. 300 to tie it in the ninth.
It was another home run — an inside-the-parker from Coby Mayo in the 11th inning — that just about sealed it for the Orioles.
And after all that, the Mets might have felt as bruised as A.J. Ewing, who smacked into the wall and was slow getting up after trying to catch the Mayo drive that led to the 7-5 Mets loss Tuesday in Queens, where the fans showed dramatic swings in allegiance.
The Mets are already mathematically eliminated, but Tuesday sure did not feel meaningless.
With one out in the top of the ninth of a game the Mets led by one, Alonso got a 2-0 ghost forkball from Kodai Senga that did not disappear and instead was quite visible in the middle of the strike zone.
Alonso turned on it, demolishing a high-arcing blast to left for his 300th career home run in a ballpark that has seen 124 of them, but only one in which Alonso provided a run for the opponents.
The swing was less jarring than the reaction: Alonso hurled his bat toward the Orioles dugout and circled the bases to mostly cheers.
“Pete Alonso” cheers broke out until Alonso — in a visiting ballpark, having just tied the game 3-3 — took a curtain call from a fanbase that does not have much to root for during September of a lost campaign in which they already have been eliminated, and thus decided to root for the one who got away.
As Alonso disappeared back into the dugout, those cheers transitioned into a loud, piercing jab toward the person who helped shoo the Polar Bear away: a stadium-wide round of “Fire Stearns.”
After both teams traded runs in the 10th, the Orioles — who are still alive and fighting for a wild-card spot — ran away with the contest against Jonathan Pintaro. The largest blow was Mayo’s drive chasing Ewing to, and almost through, the center field wall, smacking hard against it and then hitting the warning track dirt. Ewing appeared to be OK, but by the time he and the Mets outfield recovered, Mayo had rounded the bases for a three-run inside-the-park home run.
For Mets fans hoping for another Alonso moment in Queens and mere drama in a season that no longer has much, the ninth-inning swing offered plenty.
For the Mets — a group that has been the undercard in its own ballpark, with Jonah Tong hearing boos a day earlier when he walked Alonso rather than serving up a home run — it is hard to imagine the season winding down any worse.
Prior to the ninth, Mets pitching had held down Alonso, 0-for-7 with that walk until he flipped the narrative in the same way he did in Milwaukee in 2024.
Because of that homer to beat the Brewers in the wild-card round, and because of the 264 homers he slammed to become the all-time Mets leader in home runs, and because of his seven seasons as a Met in which he performed and endeared himself to the fanbase, and because of David Stearns’ decision to not pursue Alonso in free agency after Baltimore won him with a five-year, $155 million deal, Alonso returned as a beloved Mets mistake rather than as an opponent.
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“I respect their decision,” Alonso said Monday of Stearns’ front office, which replaced him at first base notably with Jorge Polanco, who has either been hurt or ineffective all season. “The guys running the team, it’s their prerogative to do whatever they think is best. I respect it professionally.
“At the same time, I’m so stoked to be an Oriole. I feel very, very fortunate to be here. I feel very fortunate to play all those years I had with the Mets. Two things can be true.”