Atlanta Braves: Pete Alonso reminded fans why he is a total goober last night

New York Mets v Atlanta Braves
New York Mets v Atlanta Braves / Matthew Grimes Jr./Atlanta Braves/GettyImages
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The rival New York Mets are not short on guys that hear a lot of boos when visiting the Atlanta Braves in Truist Park. Between Brandon Nimmo sprinting to first after a walk, Jeff McNeil fouling off a thousand pitches per AB, and Buck Showalter complaining after seemingly every pitch, the Mets offer plenty of reasons for Braves fans to roll their eyes. Last night one guy in particular had a moment go viral across social media outlets and left Braves fans everywhere in a grumpy mood.

Now before I start down this path let me just point out for any disgruntled Mets fans that may be reading this, Pete Alonso is a good baseball player. I’ll dive more into that momentarily, but for now just know Braves fans aren’t going to have many nice things to say about him any time soon. The viral moment mentioned occurred in the top of the third after Alonso took starter Bryce Elder deep for a 448 ft home run. However things got a bit chirpy to say the least after in the opposing dugout.

As we know, there certainly isn’t any love lost between these two squads. Regardless of the trash talk between rivals; this was just the latest example of how Alonso can be a bit..,cringy to put it kindly. I mean we are talking about a guy who treats the home run derby like game seven of the World Series.

That is what made what happened next even better and turned Alonso into a meme.

Pete Alonso is a worthy villain

Now without piling on here it has to be said Alonso did hit that hanging slider from Elder a very long way, so if he wants to celebrate via trash talk then so be it. But he can’t be upset when the Braves chirp back, and it was no other than the legend himself Tyler Matzek that decided to let the Mets dugout hear it once momentum swung back into the Braves dugout.

Pete Alonso leads all of baseball in home runs. He is a very feared hitter in this league and this post isn’t at all a suggestion that he doesn’t obliterate baseballs. You aren’t in the 95th percentile of barrel rate by an accident. But yelling at a rookie who was leading the league in ERA entering the ballgame, and telling him to throw what has statistically been one of the better pitches in all of baseball “again” isn’t the most flattering look for Alonso.

With the way the rest of last nights ballgame played out it felt like a reminder to everyone that early trash talk to the competition can certainly come back to bite. It’s as if the baseball gods themselves decided to put the cherry on top when Braves closer Raisel Iglesias blew Alonso away with a 98 mph fastball to start off the ninth. What followed was a look of pure defeat on Alonso’s face and enough memes on Braves Twitter to remind us why we love rivalries in sports.

Below are some of our favorites.

In the end, it was a 6-4 victory for the good guys, but don’t think Alonso and the Mets won’t come out geared up tomorrow. This certainly has the feel of a series that will have a ton of fireworks.

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