How to sell a Polar Bear: Pete Alonso and a marketing formula that works in baseball

CLEVELAND, OHIO - JULY 08: Pete Alonso of the New York Mets competes in the T-Mobile Home Run Derby at Progressive Field on July 08, 2019 in Cleveland, Ohio. (Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images)
By Evan Drellich
Sep 29, 2019

Two hours before he ripped home run No. 52 of his rookie record 53, Pete Alonso pointed to the glaringly obvious at Citi Field.

“For the right-field gate, I don’t know why they spell it, ‘Right Field,’” Alonso said. “They should spell it like David Wright’s last name. Like, ‘Wright Field.’ Which, I mean, to me, it’s legit set up on a tee.”

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Baseball’s ability to market its stars has been easy to criticize in recent years. The league and union aren’t doing enough, and the players should be more outspoken, go the complaints. Some are fair. Others — such as, “Why can’t baseball be more like the NBA?”— overlook a lot about the nature of the sport.

Alonso, the Mets’ 24-year-old first baseman, is all but guaranteed to win National League Rookie of the Year. Inside his breakout campaign, a marketing blueprint may be emerging for players: Be real. Take risks. And, ideally, hit more home runs than any rookie ever.

At the least, Alonso is proof that when a player’s personality lines up with his city and his support system, success can be had.

“It’s a little bit of a microcosm of sports in general right now,” said Jon Einalhori, the lead marketing mind behind Alonso at the agency Sosnick, Cobbe and Karon. “Basketball is kind of hot and football’s got the big TV deals and all the eyeballs and the viewers. And baseball, it’s a little bit different. It’s a team sport. It’s not as easily marketable when you have shoe deals and commercials.

“It’s not like baseball’s suffering. But baseball’s a regional sport. He’s transcended the region, and he’s getting to the national level. But it takes a lot of work and effort to get there, both for us and the player. … Ironically enough, with this record, we’re starting to talk about some co-opportunities with Aaron Judge, some cool stuff that we can do. Not normal to promote a Yankee and a Met together, but these two actually like each other, know each other a little bit. We can do really special things that can get on that football-basketball level of eyeballs.”

Unsurprisingly, Alonso is making much more money off the field this year than he is as a player with a league-minimum salary. But money, believe it or not, does not drive every off-field choice.

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“A lot of the things are organic, authentic,” Alonso said. “I don’t want to represent something, or I don’t want to be a part of something if I’m not for it, or if I’m not about it. (Say) it’s some like hand soap thing. It’s like, ‘Yeah, do this!’ I’m like, ‘No, I don’t give a shit about your hand soap.’

“It’s about stuff I feel comfortable representing.”

Everything is made easier by Alonso’s innate creativity and authenticity. He comes off kind of like a big puppy, with Andy Dwyer-esque enthusiasm. “Passion” gets tossed around Alonso a lot, and business partners want that kind of stewardship.

He has also long been inclined to use his voice. As a minor-leaguer, Alonso briefly penned a column for the Sporting News, an arrangement made by his agency after he told them of his desire to write.

“Back in the day, I used to write poetry,” Alonso said. “I still write I think I’m a good writer. I’m a published writer, technically. I mean, even before the Sporting News.

“I love just kind of like playing with certain things. I use a lot of the sensory details when I’m writing. ‘Cause I feel like I’m an OK talker, but I don’t necessarily — I can’t slow my thoughts down and really fully articulate the feeling. … I like to give like a full encompassing understanding of what I want to talk about.”

Sometimes, only one letter is needed. 

Alonso sent a tweet on July 31 that slyly inserted ‘F,’ into the Mets’ fans staple initialism, LGM, standing for Let’s Go Mets. This was his idea alone, not the process of some clever (or contrived) process.

And that may be what stands out most: There is no secret sauce behind a series of successes for Alonso’s image, other than an adherence to his particular motivations and interests. He has succeeded on the field, and moved without pretense off of it. 

“I just wanted to show appreciation to the fans,” Alonso said. “I mean, everyone writes LGM. Everybody. But I just wanted to do the ‘F’ for emphasis. Because I give a shit. I care about this team and having support — not from just the New York Mets fans, but just New Yorkers in general.

“I was just sitting in bed after the game, just typing. Even when I go home at night, I still think about stuff, and I still think about this team.”


The former director of player and talent licensing at Topps, Einalhori, 33, does not dress or talk like a stereotypical agent. In part, that’s probably because he does not want to be an agent, although he has certification from the Major League Baseball Players Association.

“I don’t need to be talking to Brian Cashman or Brodie van Wagenen and hammering out a nine-figure deal,” Einalhori said. “That’s cool — that’s a lot of work. Adam Karon, Matt Sosnick and Paul Cobbe, they’re really good at that. 

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“I want to do the creative stuff. I want to take a guy like Pete Alonso and I want to use the blank canvas analogy: he’s Picasso, it’s just a matter of putting it all together. I can’t stress it enough, the guy drove every idea. Even things I brought to him, he’d take the idea, put his Pete spin on it.”

Einalhori doesn’t love sponsored content on, say, Instagram, as a one-off deal. It feels too disingenuous. But if a post is part of an existing ongoing partnership — Alonso is a Nike athlete, so let’s say Nike has a new line of shoes —  it feels more natural. He’s worked off the beaten path for a while, landing Eric Thames on a TV show in South Korea where Thames sang songs in a mask ahead of a big reveal.

A player taking off in a meteoric fashion creates a profitable but difficult proposition for a marketer. Do you wait? How do you protect your client long term while also capitalizing on immediate success? The iron is hot, but could get hotter.

At Citi Field, high up above the right field — er, Wright Field — is the Coca-Cola Corner.

“He needs to be dressed up as the Polar Bear for a Coca-Cola commercial. That’s my next step for Pete,” Einalhori said. “I mean, he’s the Polar Bear. There’s the Coca-Cola Porch! Coca-Cola, can you hear me!?”

The idea even fits into the New York rivalry: Judge, the previous record-holder for home runs by a rookie, promotes Pepsi.

“I mean, come on,” Einalhori said. “Just blank check.”

Einalhori said Alonso’s marketing deals include escalators and protections, although a season like his has transcended everything. Some of Alonso’s partners have already approached him to do new deals.

“We’ve had a lot of interest the last two, three months, really since the Home Run Derby,” Einalhori said. “But as his year was getting to this level, where it’s going to be historic, we decided, let’s just focus on what we have, focus on the deals we have, and ride out this year. 

“I think the Home Run Derby app is the only thing that’s new for next year. So, we’re really going to, A, to give Pete time the last couple months, but B, really plan this out and take his brand to a national level. We really waited on the bigger opportunities.”

Jon Einalhori, the vice president of marketing at Sosnick, Cobbe and Karon, with the Mets’ Pete Alonso. (Courtesy of Jon Einalhori)

Alonso has agreements with Fanatics (memorabilia and autographs), Topps and Panini (trading cards), Nike (batting gloves, spikes and other items that are not team provided) and Wilson (fielding glove). He’s an ambassador for New Era and T-Mobile, and next year is going to be the face of the MLB-produced Home Run Derby game. There’s a partnership with Kobe Bryant on a training app as well.

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Einalhori said Alonso is also the first player in history to have an exclusive, formal deal with a team in which he gets a percentage of sales in team-owned game-used items: jerseys, baseballs, the bases, hats. There’s big money in those jerseys, and that might make a similar league-wide arrangement at least a topic during collective bargaining.

Ultimately, building a presence takes a village. Einalhori and Alonso at varying points connect with the commissioner’s office, the union and the Mets themselves.

Alonso’s upcoming appearance on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” airing on Friday, was coordinated with the help of MLB.

“I grew up watching ‘The (Colbert) Report’ on Comedy Central,” Alonso said. “And then every time the report was over, I would be sad, because I thought his show was better than Jon Stewart’s.”

On a daily basis, photographers hired by the league are uploading photos to an app for players and their people to access and use in social media posts.

“We’re already talking about sponsorships,” Einalhori said. “MLB, especially this year, is really stepping up.”

The Players Association, meanwhile, is a resource at all times, particularly when a new business reaches out: What’s the company like? Is there a history? 

Even when the Mets are not directly involved, they are. Many of Alonso’s marketing events in 2019 took place at Citi Field before a game.

“He might have done 20 activations, whether it’s a photo shoot, something,” Einalhori said. “Nineteen of them were at the ballpark. They gave us access to conference rooms and the field. They even moved the grounds crew one day so Pete could do something on the field.”

Someone has to field the offers, vet them, arrange them and see through ideas. As much as Alonso enjoys the creative process, he does not have the time or know-how to put them into action himself.

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Alonso called Einalhori “the tip of the spear.” They’re together at events, and they’re together on the phone when they’re not.

“He’s been absolutely spectacular,” Alonso said. 


On Tuesday, the spikes Alonso wore on Sept. 11 will go on display at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in Manhattan.

Alonso has thrown himself into the idea of being a New Yorker and wanted to do something to commemorate Sept. 11. Einalhori told him how in 2001, players wore hats representing the different agencies of first responders during the game.

Alonso loved the idea of doing it again. The only problem: MLB has strict rules surrounding game hats. Pregame is much looser.

Einalhori had to find something to meet Alonso’s needs while also protecting him. Earlier in the year, when Alonso won the Home Run Derby — and donated 10 percent of the $1 million prize money to charity — Alonso was wearing custom cleats. Einalhori thought back to that success.

“He comes up with the idea, ‘Hey, let’s do the cleats,’” Alonso said. “There’s the lowest risk and the highest reward for the cleats. Hitting the sweet spot.”

It was the Friday of Labor Day Weekend when they settled on an approach, leaving about two weeks until Sept. 11. They were scrambling to turn around roughly 40 pairs of spikes with a custom image.

Alonso went around to teammates, finding out their shoe size. Einalhori searched the internet to make sure he found the right models, respecting every player’s individual shoe deals. The hardest part of the project was sourcing the shoes overnight and getting them into the hands of the artist.

“We got stuck at one point, because I think it was (Wilson) Ramos and the two catchers, their cleat choices were unavailable, so we had to use last year’s model with a different color,” Einalhori said. “There were a lot of logistical hoops.”

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The end result: a bill of about $15,000 for Alonso, a message worth much more delivered to the city by him and his teammates, plus a lead item on “SportsCenter.”

MLB wasn’t thrilled Alonso and co. essentially went rogue with the shoes, prompting a chat with Alonso’s agency. But there was no punishment. Alonso’s intentions were clearly good.

“Mets fans have this chip on their shoulder, with a little bit of, I’d say, respectful defiance,” Einalhori said. “To him, it transcended any marketing or sponsorship repercussions or, honestly, fines, or whatever else would have happened.”

Einalhori said he has already talked to New Era, the cap supplier, about potentially doing sanctioned first responder hats next year.


Alonso and his team are considering pursuing trademarks for both LFGM and Polar Bear Pete. Enforcement is an expensive, arduous task, though. Einalhori even mentioned the possibility of an Alonso line of apparel someday.

“He’s gotten so many opportunities in apparel,” Einalhori said. “Apparel is probably the one category I haven’t done anything for him yet. That’s something I want to think about.”

Alonso’s jersey was MLB’s 14th best seller this year, per a list the league released Friday. He offered optimism baseball players can find marketing success despite a lot of the public laments.

“I feel like we really can,” Alonso said. “But I do understand. Because if you look at football, that’s a whole ‘nother level. But what’s even more at a whole ‘nother level is futbol, soccer. 

“Let’s use Aaron Judge or Bryce Harper or Mike Trout. Those three guys probably have a million to two million followers on Instagram. And rightfully so, they deserve it. All those guys are very marketable. That’s who the face of the franchise is, face of baseball. Those are our guys.

“So, who are the top three soccer players in the world? (Cristiano) Ronaldo, (Kylian) Mbappe, (Lionel) Messi, Neymar — think about how many followers those guys have. If you were to just pull up your phone, Messi probably has like 100 million followers, or like 150 million followers.”

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On Instagram, Messi has about 132 million. Alonso has 186,000. That figure, by the way, appeared to jump by 10,000 from Saturday to Sunday, after Alonso broke Judge’s rookie record for long balls.

“That’s how crazy small baseball is in the grand scheme of things,” Alonso said. “There’s more room to improve for sure. And because of the influx of all the younger players and kind of social media, how it’s growing, I feel like that’s definitely going to be really positive for the game.”

(Top photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)

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Evan Drellich

Evan Drellich is a senior writer for The Athletic, covering baseball. He’s the author of the book Winning Fixes Everything: How Baseball’s Brightest Minds Created Sports’ Biggest Mess. Follow Evan on Twitter @EvanDrellich