David Lennon: Pete Alonso week was an utter disaster for Mets

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Orioles' Pete Alonso rounds the bases after his first-inning home run against the Mets at Citi Field on Wednesday. Credit: Jim McIsaac

Since the franchise's birth in 1962, the Mets have been a magnet for worst-case scenarios, which helps explain why Pete Alonso's homecoming this week conjured up the perfect storm at Citi Field.

It required three different narratives to simultaneously converge on 41 Seaver Way during this third week of September. The first was the Mets' being a catastrophic disappointment, tumbling from a $380 million preseason World Series contender to the basement of the National League. Next there was Alonso crushing it for the Orioles, en route to another 40-homer, 110-RBI season while playing every day.

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And lastly, of course, the intensifying rage directed at president of baseball operations David Stearns, the club architect the fans hold responsible for not only pushing their beloved homegrown star to Baltimore, but demolishing a roster that gave them a playoff chase up through the final day of the previous two seasons.

If any one of those three factors had been different, we don't get the all-consuming Polar Bear circus that descended on Citi Field this week: the relentless standing ovations, the thunderous "PETE A-LON-SO!" chants followed by the similar chorus of "FIRE STEARNS!"

For Wednesday's series finale, the Alonso ruckus at Citi was a bit more subdued, the decibel-level somewhat lower. But that didn't stop Alonso, who thrilled the smaller audience (25,324) by homering in his first at-bat, a 410-foot shot into the leftfield deck off Mets' emergency starter Xzavion Curry in the Orioles' 7-1 victory. Alonso went 2-for-12 (4 Ks) in Baltimore's series sweep with a pair of home runs, plus the hotly-debated curtain call.

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"It was a really good three days," Alonso said afterward.

And one stomach-turning memory for the Mets, thanks to Alonso's 300th homer, a ninth-inning, tying blast off Kodai Senga Tuesday night that paved the way for the Orioles' 7-5 victory. Alonso re-emerging from the dugout to acknowledge the crowd's high-decibel affection - in such a game-tilting circumstance - was a spectacle that no one in the ballpark could really wrap their brain around.

Afterward, Sean Manaea had trouble walking a tightrope between respecting Alonso, his former teammate, and trying to comprehend how the Mets' own fans could essentially turn against the team.

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But this wasn't merely an outpouring of love for Alonso. It was spiked with anti-Stearns lighter fluid, and thus created a Mets' bonfire that blazed beyond anyone's control. Since Alonso arrived in Queens under the ideal conditions, partly due to the Mets' nearly seven-decade run of bad luck and poor timing, no one could be totally surprised by how everything went down.

"I don't think [the fans] turned on us," Juan Soto said before Wednesday night's loss. "I think they just cheered for him. He did everything for this city, for this organization, and I feel like they appreciated him. I don't think they turned their back on us."

As for the Citi crowd's devotion to Pete - especially for the No. 300 curtain call, which came at the Mets' expense - Soto brought up the season-long frustration around his team's performance.

"It's been a tough year for them this year," Soto said. "So I think they just saved their power for the best moment. That's what it looked like. It's been a rough year for us. They haven't had too much to cheer about. They finally got something they wanted to have fun with and they just did it."

Did Soto believe the over-the-top affection for Alonso was tied to the hostility for Stearns?

"I don't know if they're angry or not," he said. "The only way I look at it is they're just a big fan of Pete. They love him."

Reporting synthesized and verified under Nexvoro.tech editorial guidelines. Full primary records referenced via Newsday.