Earlier this month, Pete Alonso spearheaded an effort for all of his teammates to wear cleats dedicated to 9/11 victims and their families on the 18th anniversary of the tragic events.
Now, Alonso will be donating his cleats to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan.
Another "this is cool" thing: Pete Alonso will donate these Sept. 11 cleats to the 9/11 Memorial & Museum next week in lower Manhattan. pic.twitter.com/y6xi4lnfy7
- Anthony DiComo (@AnthonyDiComo) September 26, 2019
The Mets' first baseman took the initiative to ordered the custom cleats for all of his teammates, as he wanted to do something special to honor those who lost their lives on September 11.
"For me, I just come from a place where I want to show support, not just for the victims but their families as well, because no one really knows how deep those emotional scars can be," Alonso said after the Mets took the field in their custom cleats. "Living here, just kind if interacting with everybody, I've tried to immerse myself in New York living, and I see traces of it every single day, little bits and pieces of it.
"I just want to show recognition to all the people who are just heroes, just ordinary people who just felt a sense of urgency and an admirable call of duty. So this is for all of those people who lost their lives and all of those people who did so much to help."
Alonso also said at the time that he wanted to have all of his teammates wear hats honoring the first responders from that day, but said there was too much "red tape" with MLB to make that happen.
"Originally I wanted to do some hats for us," Alonso said. "I wanted to do custom hats with whatever group of first responders -- if someone wanted to do FDNY or Port Authority they had the choice. Unfortunately there's a lot of red tape with Major League Baseball, and they kind of shot that idea down. I think it's kind of sad that guys weren't allowed to -- since that day the first game back, they kind of shut it down every year since. I think that's really unfortunate."
Still, Alonso's way of showing his recognition will now be on display in Lower Manhattan.