After the September 11th terror attacks, the Mets played all of their remaining games wearing hats representing the first responders of that day. This was in defiance of the wishes of MLB. Shocking, right?

In that baseball season and all season’s following, MLB has refused to let the Mets wear the hats honoring the heroes of 9/11. Even on the 10th anniversary of 9/11, the players couldn’t wear the hats.

“We’re just trying to keep it consistent. Certainly it’s not a lack of respect. It’s just something we feel is the right thing to do.” Joe Torre, Executive VP MLB Operations at the time

SNY reports that eight years after the 10-year anniversary, MLB is still refusing to let the Mets wear the hats in-game.

While the Mets wore first responder hats before the game on Wednesday night, they were required to switch to their regular hats for the game itself. Pete Alonso had wanted the team to wear the first responder hats in-game just as they had in the days following the attacks. But he was shut down by MLB.

“Originally I wanted to do some hats for us,” Alonso said after Wednesday night’s game. “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.”

As a way to still honor the first responders after being rebuffed on the in-game hats, Alonso ordered he and his teammates custom cleats.