Pete Alonso heard the roar of the crowd but also took a quiet moment to himself — albeit in front of thousands — as he broke Aaron Judge’s rookie home run record on Saturday night in the New York Mets’ 3-0 win over the Atlanta Braves.
As Alonso rounded the bases for his 53rd home run of the season, Mets fans at Citi Field gave him a standing and roaring ovation. He threw up his arms in celebration.
Later in the game, however, he stood by himself in the field and broke down in tears. His mother admitted she’d already been bawling in her seat at the stadium — the whole family was in tears.
“He’s really passionate. He’s not moved to tears often,” Alonso’s mother Michelle told Fox’s Ken Rosenthal during the Mets-Braves broadcast. “He has a lot of fun, but he’s very serious about what he does. … So for him to feel that reward and be moved to tears warms my heart because I was certainly balling in my seat at the moment at the same time. It was a family cry fest.”
Here’s a look at the home run.
The tears didn’t seem to last long. Alonso joined the postgame broadcast coverage of the game without a shirt, which led to a lot of laughs with the team at MLB Network.
Alonso leads MLB with 11 home runs in September, his most in any month this season. It’s a shame that he and his 85-win Mets won’t get to carry that momentum into the postseason, with New York getting mathematically eliminated earlier in September.
