When Mets phenom Pete Alonso was a boy, he dreamed of becoming an astronaut or a baseball player.
He never traveled to space, but the young slugger’s moonshot home runs are out of this world — leaving fans and teammates star-struck.
And he has his mom to thank for his success.
“Mom, I love you so much, and I’m so happy you helped me … to follow my dreams! Happy Mother’s Day,” he said in a message to her that he shared with The Post.
The 24-year-old Tampa, Fla., native teared up talking about his “incredible” mom, Michelle.
She’s a feisty 57-year-old former college softball player at Ohio Wesleyan University who used to drive the Mets slugger to all his games in Tampa.
She even threw him batting practice in Little League while dad Pete was away. “It wasn’t bad BP either!” the Mets first baseman laughed. “She always had a bag of balls in the car.”
“I would throw all kinds of balls at him, all sizes — Super Balls, golf balls, water balloons, oranges and grapefruits that fell off the neighbor’s trees,” Michelle told The Post.
“He always wanted to hit. My husband used to say, ‘If he could hit his mother’s junk, he could hit anything.’ ”
“Peter,” as his mother calls him, is still hitting, including 11 homers, good for fourth-best in the National League.
And do they ever go a long way. His first major-league dinger — on April 1 at Marlins Park in Miami — soared a majestic 444 feet with an exit speed of 112.8 miles per hour.
Another monster shot 10 days later went 454 feet and was the hardest-hit ball so far this year in the big leagues, at 118.3 miles per hour.
Mama Alonso says she never gave him hitting tips but played a role in his power burst by boosting his confidence. “My input is usually about his mindset in keeping his chin up.
“I was never the type of mom to force my desires on what he should do for a career, but I gave him the tools to develop what was internally there,” she explained.
She described her son as a “team guy” and was surprised by Alonso’s emphatic bat flip after his walk-off, two-run homer Tuesday. “I’ve never seen him do a bat flip like that. It’s not his style,” she said.
“Apparently, the bat stuck to his hands from the pine tar. He probably wanted to do a little something, but it got away. And it was towards his own dugout. That hit was a huge release for him.”
Michelle Alonso was born in Lancaster, Ohio, near Columbus. Her mom, June, and dad, Jonas, were “salt of the earth type people” who “worked hard and didn’t judge people by appearances.”
She and husband Pete were “high-school sweethearts” and “long-game kind of people” who wanted to get out of Ohio to “get away from the cold weather. We had an agreement that the first one to get a job that could support both, that’s where we would move.”
When Pete landed an executive post with a consulting firm, the Alonsos ended up in Tampa, Fla.
Michelle said she has always emphasized family, focus and fun. She read to both her children, Peter and younger brother Alex, now 19, “every night,” with the future slugger’s favorite book being, “Goodnight Moon.”
“He did very well in school. Sports was his No. 1 priority. But he loved to read. He loved science. He loved experiments,” she said, adding there was “always something growing or something brewing on the kitchen counter.”
The Alonsos traveled extensively and still do. “We take family trips. We all work hard, but we play together. It was always important for us to have fun together,” she said.