Mets' Pete Alonso unveils playoff pumpkin after carving up Brewers
The Mets' Pete Alonso celebrates after winning Game 3 of a National League wild card against the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday. Credit: AP/Morry Gash
MILWAUKEE — Drenched with alcohol, deliriously happy about his season-saving home run, still trying to wrap his mind around what he had just accomplished, Pete Alonso made time late Thursday night for his and the Mets’ newest bit.
He conducted an interview — camera rolling, microphones on — in the aftermath of the Mets’ 4-2 win over the Brewers while holding a small pumpkin. And he has been carrying it around for a week.
“Nothing is more fall than playoff baseball and pumpkins,” Alonso said.
The origin of the purported rally gourd goes like this, according to Alonso: A week ago Thursday, when the Mets had an impromptu day off in Milwaukee after escaping rainy Atlanta, he and his wife, Haley, went to a farm in Wisconsin. He bought a pumpkin.
“I picked it myself,” he said.
He kept it with him all weekend, the last of the regular season. When the Mets were in Atlanta for a doubleheader Monday, Alonso rolled off the bus that morning in a vaguely cowboy-ish outfit, sunglasses on, locked in, holding the tiny orange squash. He put it on the top shelf of his locker.
So, uh, Pete, what’s with the pumpkin?
“It’s the playoff pumpkin,” he said matter-of-factly.
Is it lucky?
He stopped to think. The Mets had lost two of three games since he obtained the pumpkin; their season in that moment was on the fritz. Tomorrow was not guaranteed.
But hmm, maybe it was. Something good had happened to the Mets each of the past several days — either a win for them or a loss for a team they were competing against for a playoff spot.
So then, yes, it must be lucky. Especially now. It’s the playoff pumpkin.
Alonso has carried it with him throughout the Mets’ eventful days since — from Atlanta back to Milwaukee, where they won the NL Wild Card Series, and to Philadelphia by early Friday morning for the Division Series. He must. He is its keeper.
“This is the playoff pumpkin, guys,” Alonso said.
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
