PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Pete Alonso and the Mets are taking a playoff pumpkin with them on their playoff run back to the Big Apple.
These Cinderella Mets — who appropriately use orange in their color scheme — hope their carriage ride through the postseason won’t turn into a pumpkin at midnight any time soon as they chase their first World Series championship since 1986.
Maybe it helps that Alonso already snagged a lucky squash at a Wisconsin pumpkin patch.
Alonso used a dose of pumpkin power to hit a three-run homer off closer Devin Williams in the ninth inning to put the Mets up for good in a 4-2 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday in the decisive third game of their NL Wild Card Series.
Alonso and the Mets advanced to a best-of-five Division Series beginning Saturday in Philadelphia against the NL East champion Phillies.
As Alonso spoke to reporters during the champagne-soaked celebration in the Mets’ locker room, he was handed a small pumpkin. Alonso called it his “playoff pumpkin” and explained that he and his wife had found it while visiting a farm outside Milwaukee when the Mets were playing here last weekend.
“Nothing’s more fall than playoff baseball and pumpkins,” Alonso said.
Alonso plopped the pint-sized pumpkin on a clubhouse table next to cans of beer while he uncorked bubbly in a wild celebration.
Who knows, when the Mets retired Darryl Strawberry’s No. 18 this season, the famed Home Run Apple at Citi Field was redecorated to look like a strawberry. Maybe when the Mets return home next week for Games 3 and 4, a playoff pumpkin will rise beyond center field.
The playoff pumpkin spiced up a string of good-luck charms this season. The Mets have latched on to an “OMG” sign they raise in the dugout after big hits like Alonso’s homer. New York Mets infielder Jose Iglesias sang his song “OMG” following a June win in front of 32,465 fans at Citi Field. The song reached No. 1 on Billboard’s Latin Digital Song Sales chart in July.
Some true believers insist the Mets’ turnaround began when McDonald’s character Grimace threw out a first pitch in June. After Grimace’s first pitch, the Mets won seven straight games to start their surge in the NL East standings. Haliey Welch, better known as Hawk Tuah Girl, has became a Mets fan after she threw out a first pitch and posted a video of herself rooting on the Mets in the clincher. Welch threw a first pitch at a Mets game in August and later celebrated the Mets making “ Hawktober!”
It’s all part of a fun fall spirit the Mets hope stretches into the Fall Classic.
“That’s who we are as an organization, and that’s who we are as a team,” Alonso said Thursday night. “That’s our identity. We have everyone’s back and fully supportive, and everybody’s in it together. It’s a really special group. How far we’ve come this year from earlier this year, not a lot of people thought we’d be at this spot right now. So it’s just really special to move on, to move on the way we have.”
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