Mets: Vulgar or not, Pete Alonso is exactly what baseball needs

New York Mets first baseman Pete Alonso is far from vulgar. In fact, he’s exactly what baseball needs.

If you’ve followed anything having to do with the New York Mets this week you may have seen the headline about how New York Mets first baseman Pete Alonso is “vulgar.” It’s a laughable take I don’t even want to get into. What one person finds vulgar, a few million more may not.

Personally, the only thing I find vulgar about Alonso is how mercilessly he violates baseballs with his bat.

We’ve had about a year and a half now of knowing a little more about this great Mets slugger. A man who first entered our minds in 2018 as a minor league basher, Alonso rose to prominence in his rookie season last year with continued home runs and overall awesome play.

Alonso did more than shine on the diamond. He became the leader of the Mets as a rookie. He rallied up the team, the city, and made fans believe again.

In every way possible, Alonso became the ideal Mets play. Vulgar or not, Alonso is exactly what baseball needs.

Major League Baseball is facing more issues than just the labor talks between the players and owners/commissioner. Even before the global pandemic, the sport was in some trouble with the way it markets its players. Mike Trout is a generational star and yet the average person has no clue who he is.

Baseball has been protective of tradition, which I suppose pleases plenty of older fans. Unfortunately, it also doesn’t bring in new ones.

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You may have seen an amazing fact that the average baseball fan is 57. That’s pretty pathetic. Baseball is the sport every child in the United States should grow up playing. It’s a regional game with minor league teams all over the country. It’s universally recognized and words from the game are in our everyday vocabulary.

Surely, at some point in your day, you’ve heard a non-baseball fan say how someone or something threw them a “curveball.”

One of the biggest issues facing baseball has been its lack of marketing to these younger players. Alonso is about as ideal for this as anybody. Playing in New York certainly helps but so does is fun-loving personality and impossible-to-hate nickname of “The Polar Bear.”

Alonso is the kind of athlete people who don’t even follow the sport could fall in love with. After first getting to know him, it’s Alonso’s majestic home runs that can help keep a casual fan around longer. He is the kind of player who can make new lifelong fans—something baseball has had trouble at doing for quite some time.

Following the Mets, we got to see firsthand how quickly a rookie can become a star. All it took was a whole lot of home runs, a winning personality, and the addition of an “F” into the franchise’s official hashtag.

Whether Alonso is offensive to some or not, he’s the kind of personality baseball needs more of. To his fans, he’s a great leader. To others, he could even become a sports villain.

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In a world of cancel culture and being easily offended, it’s refreshing to have someone like Alonso in a game owned by greed. I hope Pete never changes. And when baseball resumes, I hope to hear plenty more LFGM from him.