Alonso's 300th home run, in enemy colors, beats the Mets

Pete Alonso spent seven seasons making Citi Field shake with home runs for the New York Mets. On Tuesday night, wearing the road gray of the Baltimore Orioles, he did it one more time, and the crowd that once considered him their own gave him a curtain call anyway.

Alonso's 300th career home run, a game-tying solo shot off Mets right-hander Kodai Senga in the top of the ninth inning, set up an 11-inning, 7-5 Orioles victory over New York that kept Baltimore's fading wild-card hopes alive with ten games left in the regular season. The homer came one night after Alonso played his first game at Citi Field as a visitor, an experience the Mets marked with a video tribute and chants of his name.

What happened

Trailing by a run, Alonso drove a 109.6-mph shot off Senga's 82.5-mph forkball 414 feet over the left-center-field wall, tying the score at 3-3 and triggering the kind of ovation more often reserved for a franchise icon than an opposing cleanup hitter. Alonso flipped his bat toward the Baltimore dugout and rounded the bases to a rising roar, and by the time he crossed home plate, his own teammates were pushing him back up the dugout steps for a curtain call, a gesture almost never extended to a visiting player.

Orioles manager Craig Albernaz said afterward that he had never seen anything like it. Baltimore reliever Shane Baz described the sequence, and the reception, as something out of a movie. The game did not end there. The Orioles took a 4-3 lead in the 10th on a wild pitch, New York's Marcus Semien tied it back up with an RBI double, and Baltimore's Coby Mayo settled matters in the 11th with a three-run, inside-the-park home run to center field after Mets outfielder A.J. Ewing crashed into the wall chasing the ball. It was the Orioles' first inside-the-park homer since 2023.

The numbers

Alonso's homer was the 36th of his first season in Baltimore and the 300th of his career, making him the 19th active major leaguer to reach the mark and, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, the 20th player in American or National League history to hit his 300th homer against a former club. The last player to do so was Andrew McCutchen, who reached 300 for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Philadelphia Phillies in April 2024. Alonso entered the night with a .267 average, 101 RBIs, which led the American League, and 152 games played, all in his age-31 season. Only Ralph Kiner and Albert Pujols hit more home runs than Alonso's 300 through a player's first eight major league seasons.

Of those 300 homers, 264 came for the Mets, still the franchise record, in 1,008 games; the one on Tuesday was his 124th at Citi Field but the first not hit in a Mets uniform. The win improved Baltimore's record to 74-78. Even with the comeback, the Orioles remained three games behind the Cleveland Guardians for the third American League wild-card spot, according to MLB's current standings, with ten games remaining on the schedule.

How Alonso ended up in Baltimore

Alonso became a fixture in Queens after debuting in 2019 and setting the major league rookie home run record that year. He spent his entire career with the Mets before hitting free agency last winter, when the Orioles signed him to a five-year, $155 million contract in December, betting on a middle-of-the-order bat to anchor a young, cost-controlled roster after Baltimore's 2025 postseason miss. The move ended one of the more visible player-franchise pairings in recent Mets history and left New York, which is fighting for its own postseason positioning, to replace his production in the middle of its lineup.

The Mets organized a video tribute before Monday's series opener, and fans chanted Alonso's name during pregame introductions and his first at-bat, a reception that continued into Tuesday's game before he delivered the milestone hit against them. Senga, speaking through an interpreter, said he had watched Alonso hit for years and could tell from the crowd's reaction how much the fan base still loved him.

Reaction and what comes next

Alonso downplayed the individual achievement in favor of the team's position in the standings.

"Honestly, it's great because for us, we're in a postseason push right now. Doesn't matter who we're playing, it's really, really important coming down the stretch for us. We want to be in October, and all these games count," Alonso said, according to MLB.com.

He also acknowledged the emotional weight of returning to Queens as an opponent for the first time. "I appreciate all the support, especially for all the years I've been here, all the life I've lived here," he said, adding that the reaction from Mets fans felt like "a two-way street." Teammate Coby Mayo, who delivered the decisive blow two innings later, credited Alonso's track record for coming through in the moment, and Albernaz called the curtain call from an opposing dugout a fitting acknowledgment of what Alonso had meant to the sport, if not specifically to the Orioles.

Both the ESPN and Baltimore Banner accounts of the game emphasized the rarity of a road player receiving a curtain call, framing it as evidence of how deeply Alonso's Mets tenure resonated with the fan base he left behind. UPI's wire report noted the milestone came against the only organization Alonso had played for before this season, adding another layer to an already unusual night at Citi Field.

For the Orioles, the larger story is whether Tuesday's dramatic comeback becomes a turning point in a wild-card race they are still, mathematically, part of. At 74-78 with ten games to play and a three-game deficit to close, Baltimore has little margin for a repeat of the inconsistent stretches that defined its season, but wins of this kind, built on a milestone home run and a rare inside-the-park finish, are the type managers point to when trying to sustain a late push. The Mets, who dropped a game they led in the ninth inning, face their own stretch-run pressure and will look to close out the three-game series without further letting a former franchise cornerstone beat them.