It’s officially time for Mets fans to start being normal about Pete Alonso

I promise I’m not trying to rain on anybody’s parade.

Pete Alonso arrived with the New York Mets at the tail end of the infamously short-lived Mickey Callaway era, a dark time for the franchise in which the big, brawny first baseman served as a rare source of light. He spent most of the next seven years mashing, winning NL Rookie of the Year honors, making five All-Star teams and even becoming the master of the Home Run Derby. I completely understand why that means something to Mets fans, why it continues to mean something even with Alonso now in Baltimore, and I’d never begrudge a fan base for welcoming back a former star player with open arms.

By all means, Alonso earned the tribute video he got in his first game back in Queens with the Orioles on Monday night, and he deserved the ovation that came with it.

The team even played his old walk-up song ahead of his first at-bat, a nice touch.

If that were all this was, a warm welcome for a familiar face, we’d have no issue here. But that was very much not what Alonso’s return was about, at least not primarily; in fact, that’s not what this whole thing has been about from the moment he decided to sign elsewhere in free agency last winter. Let’s just say it’s not a coincidence that the ovation for Alonso was followed almost immediately by chants of “Fire Stearns!” that were nearly as loud.

What Mets fans really see in Alonso’s return is a reminder of what they supposedly used to have, before the dastardly Stearns came on as president and promptly ruined it all with his spreadsheets. Alonso was the golden boy, so the story goes, the selfless face of the franchise, and in turn that franchise spat in his face and forced him to go elsewhere.

Criticize Stearns for the team he’s built all you want — lord knows he’s earned it this season — but in their frenzy to turn Alonso into a martyr, half of New York has long ago lost touch with reality.

No, Pete Alonso isn’t what went wrong with the 2026 Mets

Let’s say that Steve Cohen decided override Stearns and pay Alonso what he was asking for in free agency. What, exactly, would be different about the outlook of the Mets moving forward?

Alonso’s production alone would not have taken this team from 11 games below .500 and 12 games back of the final Wild Card spot to the postseason. All his presence on the roster would have done is given fans a few more homers to cheer about amid another lost year, and leave the team on the hook for more than $30 million per year for Alonso’s age-32 through age-35 campaigns.

If you could go back and tell Stearns exactly how this season would play out, both for Alonso and the Mets, he’d make the same decision he made back in December. Handing Alonso that contract would only make sense if you had good reason to believe you were one piece away from winning the World Series, but that’s not where this roster is — and it’s not where this roster was in the winter.

Really, though, my objection isn’t really about anything happening on the field moving forward. It’s about the ways that Mets fans, in an effort to find somewhere to channel their frustration this season, have distorted history into something unrecognizable.

Mets fans’ revisionist history about Pete Alonso is hypocrisy masquerading as nostalgia

Really, who do Mets fans think Pete Alonso is? A very good player, no doubt, but also one with real limitations — and who, it bears repeating, never actually won anything of consequence during his time in Queens.

Yes, there was the homer off of Devin Williams in the Wild Card series, and the ensuing run to the NLCS. But that was one of exactly two postseason appearances the team made during Alonso’s tenure; the other came back in 2022, when a Mets team that won 101 games in the regular season promptly flamed out against the Padres at home in the Wild Card round.

Which, really, is as neat a summation of Alonso’s New York career as anything. It’s richly ironic that Mets fans are now waxing poetic about the Alonso era, because they were desperate for the team to get blown up while it was actually happening. And for good reason! The Mets were a perpetual disappointment over those seven years, and that on-field underperformance came with near-constant clubhouse drama to boot.

That’s not all or even mostly Alonso’s fault, of course, and I don’t blame Mets fans for not holding it against him. Again: Welcome him back with a standing ovation! But don’t pretend as though he was an inner-circle Hall of Famer desperate to remain a Met for life. In reality, his defense frequently had fans ready to pull their hair out. In reality, he turned down a seven-year, $165 million contract extension yeras ago, then very publicly opted out of his contract minutes after a devastating loss eliminated New York from playoff contention in game 162 last season.

That doesn’t deserve to be Alonso’s entire legacy. It is part of it, though, and it’s a part that Mets are determined not to acknowledge in their effort to find black hats to blame and a victim narrative to nurse.