Hitting in the big leagues is so difficult, Robinson Cano believes, that you cannot overwhelm yourself with fretful thoughts. Rather, you need to make sure to do what you need to do to have fun, and he told New York Mets teammate Pete Alonso this during Alonso's rookie season.
Alonso replied earnestly, "OK, Professor," and Cano loved that -- a young player was willing to listen and absorb, and Cano offered other thoughts from time to time. Like when Alonso was closing in on Aaron Judge's rookie home run record and Cano thought he was pressing.
"He was three, four home runs away, and he was really struggling," Cano recalled. "He was swinging at anything close, even on the ground. I said, 'Bro, you got to relax. Listen, you want to hit a home run, come and talk to me.' He said, 'OK, Professor, tell me.'"
Alonso remembered this conversation and a comment made by another teammate. "So that kind of helped me back off," Alonso said. "Jake deGrom was like, 'Were you nervous?' I'm like, 'No, what do you mean I was nervous?' And he said, 'Because you were swinging sometimes when the pitcher hadn't even let go of the ball.'"
So thereafter, Cano would tell Alonso how he was going to be pitched, with predicted sequencing and location. "Just be ready," Cano remembered informing Alonso. "Boom, he hit a home run. He came to me, he's like, 'Professor!'"
In the days that followed, Cano said, they went through the same routine, the professor telling the student how he would be pitched, and Alonso tied Judge's record. On the next-to-last day of the season, Alonso was set to face Mike Foltynewicz of the Braves, who pitched well in the second half last season and thrived with hard stuff. "I said, 'Listen, this guy is going to challenge you with the fast one,'" Cano recalled. "'Just be ready because he's going to throw hard. At some point, he's going to throw a fastball' -- and that's exactly what he pitched."
When Alonso came around to home plate after his record-setting homer, he met Cano, who was about to bat, with a hug and said, "I love you, man."
Cano remembered, "And that was pretty special. It's something that as a kid, I don't think anybody would have dreamed he hit 53 home runs. You always dream about at least having a great year, hitting 30 home runs. So that was something really special. It was great to have that moment."
We heard a lot of Pete Alonso stories doing our preparation for the E:60 on the Mets' first baseman. Here are a few others:
• Derek Morgan is Alonso's cousin who pitched to him in the 2019 Home Run Derby. "So, Opening Day, we were in D.C," he says. "We went to dinner afterwards and Pete was with us. He's kind of sitting behind me and at some point throughout the dinner, his big old hand lands on my shoulder. And he's like, 'Hey, cuz.' I'm like, 'Yeah, what's up Pete?' He's like, 'How's your BP?'"
Batting practice.
Morgan: "I'm like, 'Well, I think it's pretty good. I mean, my high schoolers like it,' because I coached baseball. And he's like, 'I might need you midsummer.' And I'm thinking, Pete, you're still going to be playing, man, what's he talking about? And he keeps going. He keeps saying it and he's like, 'Yeah, I might need you in Cleveland.'
"And then me being the big sports fan, following sports, I'm like, this guy's talking about the Home Run Derby. And I mean, this is Opening Day. You know what I mean? That just shows that he's determined to make it there and determined to do it. And it kind of was like, I don't want to say a joke, but you're like, 'Oh yeah, OK.'
"Then I'm following him and it's getting closer and he's just tearing it up, and more and more, I'm like, man, this is becoming real, this could happen. I was on my way to Chicago for a bachelor party, and Pete calls me. ... This was the beginning of June. So he's like, 'We made it, we're in.' He's like, 'Get that arm ready.'
"And we had exchanged texts and phone calls beforehand, and he's like, 'Get that arm ready, is your arm ready?' And all of a sudden, it's real. I'm on my way to a bachelor party and all I could think about is, man, I need to get ready for this Home Run Derby. But that's how I found out."
• During our interview with former Mets executive J.P. Ricciardi, I mentioned that Alonso had been bullied as a kid. "I like to see the guy who bullied him," Ricciardi said. "Pete's enormous. Big and thick. It's like someone put a uniform on a coke machine. He's big, he's thick, he's solid, he's square. When you look at it, it's not an athletic look, but he moves his feet better than people think and his hands are better than people think. Some athletes are just, they don't look the part, but they ended up doing a little bit with their footwork that enables them to get past the eye test."
• Tripper Johnson, Alonso's agent, played professional baseball before he switched to college football. "I first met Pete when he was 16 or 17 years old, and I remember walking out the front door thinking that was not the normal interaction I have with a 16-, 17-year-old. Usually it's talking about video games or high school or prom or whatever, just being a kid. ... The first thing he talked about was my perspective, you know, personally I signed out of high school professionally. And so he picked my brain of my thought process of why I went down that road, which is not normal for a 16-, 17-year-old.
"And Pete from a young age, you know, great family, good people. Obviously he's learned a lot from his father and his mother. But he's asking me questions about my thought process and why I did things. I went back and played some college football at a later age, and he wanted to know why I did that.
"He told me at that same time, 'I'm going to be a major league baseball player. And so for me to make that happen I need to understand everything there is to know.' ... I left the house thinking he was interviewing me, not the other way around. And so I was just very impressed at his young age, how that was just not the normal line of thinking."
• Alonso described what it was like to wait for his first at-bat in the big leagues. "It was kind of anticlimactic because we were at Nationals Park. It was like, 'Now batting, No. 20, Pete Alonso.' It was no pizazz or anything. And then Mad Max is on the mountain."
"I remember I'm like, 'Well, what am I going to do in my first one in the big leagues?'" Alonso recalled. "It's like, 'Yeah, I'm here. Might as well just take a big old rip.' Throws me the first pitch -- and I remember I'm like, 'OK, all right, now it's on, now it's on.' And then it was just nuts. I struck out my first at-bat. I kind of laughed. I'm like, 'That's fine. It's going to happen eventually.'"
• So many of the folks we interviewed, including Mets manager Luis Rojas, used the same two words to describe Alonso. "Funny and goofy," Rojas said. "I got to say it, and everybody calls him like that. He's one of those guys that he's really fast. He's really quick when something happens, saying something funny in the baseball humor type of way. But he brings everything into baseball terms.
"He makes everyone laugh around him, very positive, always cheering out for his teammates, always backing them up out in the field and in [the clubhouse]. It's always positive vibes. He's a great guy to have around. I think no matter how it's going for him, he always has those positive vibes around his teammates and he's always backing them up."
• Alonso explained why he wears No. 20. "It's just a number I've always loved, I don't know why. It's just something I've always loved to have. I know my dad wore it in high school when he played football, but other than that, I don't know. It's just something that I just love the number 20. To me, I consider it a part of who I am as a baseball player. I'll always want to wear No. 20 if I can."
• Rojas spoke about Alonso's work ethic: "He is an over-doer. When I used to see him, when he got to us in the minor leagues and he was in development, how he went about things, he wanted to do more because he wanted to get better. After that year in '17, when he came in '18, we met here in spring training again from the offseason and he told me, 'Luis, I took so many ground balls. You can't imagine how many ground balls I took.' The number was infinite.
"That's the way he went about it. I think that fueled him, everyone just doubting and seeing that he had a weakness, letting him know that he had a weakness and he knew it himself. You would hit him ground balls and he'd miss a ball, and you could see his reaction sometimes, and he knew he had to get better."
• Cano on Alonso as a hitter: "His power reminds me of a guy that I played with -- he's on the A-Rod level" -- Alex Rodriguez -- "because A-Rod was a guy that hit the ball anywhere out of the ballpark, line drive, fly ball. A-Rod was at another level as a hitter. And that's the same thing that I see with Pete. It's just a matter of time. I guarantee you he's going to continue hitting those bombs because he's smart and he makes adjustments."
• Alonso talked about breaking Judge's record: "I love the history of baseball. I mean, being an ex-history major in college, I just adore the history of the game. I love the evolutions and the different stages. And I understand what the gravity of that [is] and the fact that just me, like that's my name on that record. It's crazy.
"And honestly, how that season went for me was incredibly insane. And I hope someone else breaks it. I hope someone does because I know the sheer joy and emotion and just happiness that comes from that moment. I'd be so happy for them because this entire season changed my life. And I mean that in the best way possible."
• In the midst of Alonso's record-breaking season, he got a taste of what it's like to be a recognizable professional athlete in New York. He told us this story:
"So my apartment building is right next to a hospital in Manhattan. And me and my fiancée are walking out, it's probably right around lunch hour. So people are out and about, and there's a doctor that runs into me. We're waiting for the light to let us walk across the street. And he's like, 'Oh my god. Pete Alonso. Oh my god, I'm the biggest Mets fan, congrats on the year. But can I ask you a huge favor?' I think he's going to tell me like, 'Hey, I got a piece of paper, can you sign?' Or it's like, 'Can you sign something or can we take a picture?'
"He's like, 'You know what? Can you please do me a favor? I need you to stop swinging at sliders in the dirt. I need you to stop swinging at sliders in the dirt because they don't want to pitch [to] you. They don't want to pitch [to] you. They're going to keep throwing them, and if you keep swinging, they're going to keep throwing them. So don't swing at sliders in the dirt. I hope you have a wonderful day. But other than that, I love what you're doing.' And then he speeds off. He's like, 'I got surgery, I got to run, I'll see you later.'
"And in my mind, I'm like, 'Oh, make sure you cut in a straight line.' I'm not telling you how to give your surgery. But it's all in good fun and I love it and hopefully that guy sees this. He'd get a big kick out of it."