A Met for life? It should happen with Polar Bear

Across the life of the New York Mets franchise, they’ve never been much good at having Mets for life, all the way back to when Tom Seaver, known as “The Franchise,” was traded away in 1977.

Nolan Ryan never came close. Dwight Gooden and Darryl Strawberry, who helped the Mets one of the two World Series in their history back in 1986, and whose numbers will be retired this season, left for different reasons. They still left. David Wright’s career ended far too soon because of injuries, when he looked as if he was going to be the greatest Mets position player of them all. José Reyes, a kid when Wright was a kid, one who came up through the farm system the same as Wright did, left in free agency after nine years with the Mets.

The Mets have imported plenty of stars, including future Hall of Famers like Mike Piazza and Pedro Martínez and Tom Glavine. But they have never had someone like Derek Jeter, a Hall of Famer who came up with the team and played his whole career with one team.

Pete Alonso, who just avoided arbitration with a one-year, $20.5 million contract for the 2024 season is eligible to become a free agent himself when the season is over, ought to be a Met for life.

No one would suggest that he will ever win with the Mets the way Jeter won with the Yankees, or that even with the home run numbers he has put into the books already, that you would compare his importance to these Mets as Seaver was to his Mets. But he shares this with both of them: His team’s fans passionately see Alonso as one of their own.

Seaver didn’t have any choice when he left. The Mets traded him, more out of spite than anything else. But Alonso, if the Mets don’t sign him to a contract extension that will keep him at Citi Field for the rest of his career, can walk away at the end of this year the way Strawberry did, something Darryl himself now says he looks back on with great sadness.

“I think the relationship with him and the organization is quite different,” Strawberry said the other day, when the dates of the separate number retirement ceremonies for him and Doc Gooden were officially announced. “I didn’t have one when I hit the free agency market when I was in my last season in 1990. They left the door open for me and I ended up leaving. I just hope he doesn’t leave because I ended up personally with a belly full of regrets.”

Strawberry then added these thoughts on the home run star of the Mets known as the Polar Bear:

“I just hope that he reaches a point and they reach a point as an organization where they come together and keep him there. Let him be the player that he has been. Let him break all the records.”

Darryl was wrong about an awful lot of things during his baseball career. But he is right about Alonso, who is the most popular Met since Wright was in his prime. He has also become the face of the franchise across his five years as a Met, the same as Wright was. During that time, in a long ball world, he has hit more home runs than anybody in his sport.

Perhaps most important, he shows up to play, just about every single game. “Posts the hell up,” as his former manager Buck Showalter still says. In his five years as a Met, Alonso has missed a grand total of 24 games, and never missed more than 10 in a season.

Even last season, when Alonso’s batting averaged dropped to a career-low .217, he hit 46 more home runs and knocked in 118. Even when things were falling apart around him, Alonso kept posting up, and showing up. At a time when Mets fans aren’t sure what their team is going to look like in ’24, with all the people who left last summer, Alonso is still there for them.

Pete Alonso is their best player, their star, their brand. Everybody keeps saying that Scott Boras, Alonso’s new agent, will discourage him from signing a long-term contract extension. The Mets ought to try. All those other stars left, across all the years. The Polar Bear needs to stay.