Pete Alonso Flames Sports Illustrated Over Noah Syndergaard Tommy John Surgery Take

March 2020 is a terrible time to be a public (or private) figure -- every move is scrutinized in terms of the greater good, while tensions are running exceedingly high.

Everyone should absolutely stay inside, no matter where you are, and any non-essential outdoor behavior should be cancelled.

But where does an athlete's surgical procedure fall on this spectrum? If Noah Syndergaard of the Mets, who needs to undergo Tommy John surgery and rehab for well upwards of a year, elects for the surgery now, is that out of bounds? Should he wait, with each week that goes by stealing another precious week of his future activity at the MLB level? It's a tough moral quandary, but Thor's teammate Pete Alonso doesn't believe the decision has anything to do with the public good.

I'm a person who believes that there simply has to be a way for specially-trained orthopedic surgeons to treat high-profile athletes without it interfering with our current public health crisis. It's certainly a dicey call to criticize either direction here, though.

We need as many doctors as we can battling the pandemic at every level, and every step our nation takes these days, several weeks too late, is already coming at a tremendous loss. But Syndergaard is sacrificing a bit of his career with every minute wasted here, so as long as the procedure was organized far away from the relief efforts, Alonso certainly has a point here, too.

It would be hard to accuse Alonso of not adequately caring about those involved in the current crisis -- he's gone above and beyond to reach out and reassure fans. No matter how you slice it, though, someone can be framed in the wrong here for asking an ethical question.