Pete Alonso

Alonso attended Jesuit High School in Tampa for his first two years of high school, and transferred to Henry B. Plant High School in Tampa to finish high school. He played lacrosse and football as a freshman before deciding to focus solely on baseball. For the baseball team, he was a third baseman. He enrolled at the University of Florida, where he played college baseball for the Florida Gators as a first baseman. He was named All-Southeastern Conference in his freshman year. In 2014, he played collegiate summer baseball with the Madison Mallards of the Northwoods League, and in the summer of 2015, he played for the Bourne Braves of the Cape Cod Baseball League. In 2016, his junior year, he hit .374/.469/.659 with 14 home runs and 60 RBIs in 58 games. He competed for Florida in the 2015 and 2016 College World Series.

MLB.com ranked Alonso as New York's fourth best prospect going into the 2018 season. He began the 2018 season in Binghamton, and received a midseason promotion to the Las Vegas 51s of the Class AAA Pacific Coast League. He represented the Mets in the 2018 All-Star Futures Game. In 132 games between Binghamton and Las Vegas, he slashed .285/.395/.579 with 36 home runs and 119 RBIs. He won the Joe Bauman Home Run Award. That season, Alonso was the final batter in Cashman Field history, as he hit a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 9th inning during the last baseball game played at the facility.

Alonso made the Mets Opening Day roster in 2019 as the starting first baseman. Alonso was in the team's starting lineup on Opening Day on March 28, and recorded his first major league hit against Washington Nationals pitcher Justin Miller in the eighth inning. First publicized on March 30, third-base coach Gary DiSarcina gave Alonso the enduring nickname "Polar Bear" for his power. He hit his first major league home run on April 1 off of Drew Steckenrider of the Miami Marlins. On April 9, Alonso had his first career multi-home run game against the Minnesota Twins.

In the 2020 season shortened by COVID-19, he played in 57 of the 60 games and batted .231/.326/.490 with 16 home runs and 35 RBIs. He had the highest maximum exit velocity of all major league hitters, at 118.4 mph.