More than ever, Alonso counts his blessings

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- It was five o’clock on a Saturday afternoon at The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches, and the Mets have the field for their game against the Nationals at a few minutes after six. But already the ballpark is coming to life all around Pete Alonso as he stands next to the batting cage, people filing into the place and finding their seats, some already in lines at the concession stands. And there were all the sweet sounds of baseball around Alonso, on the last day before the first official first day of spring.

Alonso took it all in. He was smiling. The player known as the Polar Bear smiles a lot when he is on a ballfield. Maybe a little more than usual on this Saturday, because of what happened to him last Sunday night as he began his drive from Tampa, his wife, Haley, behind him in her own car, to the Mets’ Spring Training home in Port St. Lucie, Fla.

“When you’ve been as lucky as I’ve been in my life, you don’t have to be told that every day is a blessing,” Alonso said. “But then something like this happens, and you get proof about why you should treat every day as a blessing.”

“This” for Pete Alonso is a car running a red light in Tampa last weekend, around this same time of day. “This” was the car crashing into Pete Alonso’s truck and flipping it over three times until it crash-landed on its roof, Haley Alonso watching it all.

She and Pete had gotten married just four months ago, an occasion her husband described as “the best day of my life.” Now “this” had happened, right in front of her. On Instagram afterward, she wrote about getting out of her car and running toward his:

“I was terrified of what I was going to see. I couldn’t see inside the truck because the windshield was shattered.”

Then her husband was kicking out the windshield as a way of getting out of his truck. Somehow, and by the grace of God, he was uninjured when he did get out, escaping with only a scratch on his arm. And now, a week later, he stood on a ballfield in the Florida sun. Alonso was in the middle of all this baseball even on a day when he wasn’t in manager Buck Showalter’s batting order against the Nationals, as we talked about the randomness of life and death, and how the next moment is the one that can change everything.

“It doesn’t matter that you didn’t do anything wrong,” Alonso said. “One moment you’re driving your truck, basically on your way to work, and the next moment you’re turning over in the air, and completely helpless. And not knowing what’s going to happen next.”

Showalter had been sitting in his office earlier, wordlessly handing over his phone with the video from the aftermath of the crash, Pete and Haley Alonso’s luggage now lined up on the sidewalk.

“I reminded our guys afterward,” said Showalter, a Florida native, “that in Florida, sometimes a red light isn’t anything more than a suggestion to the person in the other car.”

It was just a couple years ago, in the spring of 2019, when Alonso, the kid from Plant High in Tampa, began slugging his way into the Mets’ Opening Day batting order. Nobody was sure that it was his time to make the big club. Maybe only Alonso knew. And before that season was over, Alonso would break Aaron Judge’s all-time rookie home run record with 53, nine more than any Met had ever hit in a season. He knocked in 120 runs that year and was as valuable as any player in the National League as the Mets won 86 games.

Last year, with little protection around him in the Mets' order, he hit 37 homers and knocked in 94. Even in the COVID-shortened season of 2020, Alonso hit 16 homers in 57 games, and if you project that out over 162, Alonso would have been knocking on the door for another 40-homer season. He has now hit 106 in essentially 2 1/2 seasons. The most a Mets player has had in his career is Darryl Strawberry, with 252. He has also won the Home Run Derby at the All-Star Game twice.

“The real deal,” Showalter said of Alonso.

The Mets have Frankie Lindor across the infield from Alonso. They have Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer at the top of Showalter’s rotation. But Pete Alonso is as much their star as anyone they have, and on his way to being the greatest slugger the team has ever had.

“My approach never changes,” Alonso said on Saturday. “You just keep hammering on the door.”

Everybody on the field looked happy to be back playing ball again. Nobody was happier than Pete Alonso, who started walking now around the cage and back toward the Mets' clubhouse behind the right-field wall.

“Who’s luckier to be out here than me?” Alonso said.