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ATLANTA — A drenched Pete Alonso glanced around a happy and champagne-soaked clubhouse, a sight that had proven elusive for his first five years with the Mets.
It was worth the wait.
“This is way more than I imagined,” Alonso said after the Mets took the first game of a doubleheader with the Braves at Truist Park, which ensured a wild-card berth. “This is unbelievable.”
Eight-hundred forty-six major league games later, the Mets slugger finally got a chance to celebrate a season that will be extended.
Alonso had reached the postseason once, in 2022, when the Mets opted against spraying bottles in one another’s faces: They had been caught by the Braves and learned on the final regular-season day that they would not win the NL East.
The disappointment meant no party for a wild-card team that was knocked out in the wild-card round by the Padres.
That stuck with Alonso, who called upon his bubbly drought in a team meeting two weeks ago.
On Sept. 16, he tried to inspire and convey how much a bash like this would mean, a pending free agent desperate to crack into the postseason and desperate for toasts to a season that was worth celebrating.
The meeting — or maybe it was the team-wide resilience for a club that had buried itself by early June and managed to escape — worked.
After splitting the doubleheader on Monday, Alonso was in the middle of the festivities.
“Oh, my God,” Alonso said, appropriate for the 2024 Mets. “Wow. Just wow. This is surreal. Vibes are immaculate. This is super well-deserved because we’ve come such a long way this year.”
Such was the theme, plenty of Mets calling upon a record that was 24-35 on June 2.
The 89-win club found a rotation that began rolling, swapped some pieces, added Jose Iglesias and called a late-May meeting that many cite as the turning point.
Alonso has not had his best season in what might be his final one for the Mets, but he will hit free agency having slugged 34 home runs with a .788 OPS and owns a chance to improve his stock in October.
“Not a lot of people saw us in this spot right now, especially being 11 games under two months in,” said Alonso, who played in all 162 games this season. “We’ve answered the bell.”
They will have to answer it again immediately, deeming the celebration worth having even though their playoff run begins Tuesday in Milwaukee.
“I’m just so happy for everyone, top to bottom,” Alonso said. “I can’t wait for tomorrow.”
