Entering Saturday's game, Pete Alonso had gone 13 straight games without hitting a home run for the Mets.
The first baseman had been hitting the ball well during that time, just not over the fence like he's accustomed to — stuck on 18 home runs for the season and 244 for his career.
But against the Yankees in the Subway Series, Alonso broke out of his power outage and made up for lost time by hitting two in a 12-6 win. He made them count, too, one of them a two-run shot and the second a three-run bomb. Both extended Met leads in a game that was never safe, especially with the Yankees' high-powered offense and the Mets' ultra-thin bullpen.
Alonso's career home run total is now at 246 which puts him six homers away from tying Darryl Strawberry's franchise record of 252. So not only did he end his homer-less drought, he's that much closer to entering the Mets' record books as the most prolific home-run hitter in team history.
And if we know anything about Alonso's power, his dingers tend to come in bunches — just ask the Yankees.
That means the Mets might need to gear up the celebration paraphernalia sooner rather than later as they get ready to honor their home-grown slugger.
But if you ask Alonso about the record, he'll tell you he's just trying to focus on helping his team win as many games as possible.
"I mean I know it," he said of the record, "but I just want to help the team win. That’s really all I want to do."
It's the right attitude to take for a team that has gotten hot again after enduring a terrible 3-14 stretch that had many people wondering about the legitimacy of this team.
After four straight wins, the Mets are 52-38, 0.5 GB of the Philadelphia Phillies for the division lead and will start to get much healthier in the coming weeks. They also have a chance to sweep the crosstown rival Yankees on Sunday if they can pull out a win without a true starter on the mound.
Nevertheless, despite being in the thick of a playoff race, whenever Alonso does, in fact, break Strawberry's record, the Mets will be able to let their guard down, just for a second, to celebrate Alonso's accomplishment.
It seems the only question now is, can he do it before the All-Star break?
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