Mets fans booed their own pitcher for not letting the other team beat them. That is where this fan base is in September 2026, and honestly, they were right.
Pete Alonso came back to Citi Field on Monday night for the first time since signing a five-year, $155 million deal with the Baltimore Orioles in December. He walked out to a standing ovation, an emotional tribute video and “Layla,” his walk-up song from last season. All 35,800 in the building chanted his name before each of his four plate appearances.
Then Jonah Tong walked him on a 3-2 count in the third, and the place turned on its own starter. Not a grumble. A real boo, aimed at a Mets pitcher for doing his job correctly.
Alonso sits on 299 career home runs. One away. Everyone in that ballpark came to watch him hit the 300th against the team he spent seven seasons with, and the guy on the mound was the only thing standing between them and the moment.
The foul ball said everything
In his second at-bat he launched a towering foul down the left field line with home run distance on it, and the entire stadium groaned. Reporter Max Goodman put it best: “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a fan base root so hard for a player on another team like this before.” Chelsea Janes added that she could not remember a visiting player getting this much love returning to an old park.
Alonso went 0-for-3 with the walk. He flied out against Tong in the first, grounded out against Tong in the fifth and struck out swinging against Dedniel Nunez in the eighth. Baltimore won 2-1, and that loss officially eliminated the Mets from playoff contention.
Read the sequence there. The Mets lost a game, lost their season and lost their crowd to a first baseman in an Orioles uniform, all in the same three hours. Entering Monday they were 69-80.
Alonso handled it exactly the way you would expect. “Two things can be true at the same time: I’m very happy and appreciative of my time I spent as a Met and I’m beyond grateful and appreciative for the Baltimore Orioles.”
The front office should be paying attention
Here is the number that should sting in Queens. Alonso is still the franchise home run leader with 264 across seven seasons in New York. Five-time All-Star. He left, and the building he left still treats him like he never did.
You can argue the baseball decision all you want. Contracts for first basemen in their thirties age badly, the money was real and the Mets had reasons. Fine. But a fan base does not chant for a player who was just a good producer. They chanted because Alonso was the thing they actually liked about watching this team, and nobody replaced that.
The Elias Sports Bureau notes that Alonso could become the third player to hit his 300th home run against a team he played 1,000 or more games for. That is a wonderfully weird piece of trivia and a brutal indictment of a front office in the same sentence.
There is a nice symmetry to it too. Alonso’s 299 matches the exact total of his friend and former teammate Francisco Lindor. Two guys, same number, one still wearing orange and blue.
Mets fans get two more cracks at it this week, starting Tuesday. They will chant again, and if Jonah Tong’s teammates pitch around Alonso again, they will boo again. A fan base that has been sold a rebuild, a spending spree and a September collapse has earned the right to want one clean thing.
The Mets front office should watch those at-bats closely. Their own customers told them exactly what they valued, at full volume, while the team was being eliminated. That feedback does not get clearer.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.