The last time all the New York baseball teams had young, homegrown sluggers was back in the 1950s, when Mickey Mantle was at Yankee Stadium and Willie Mays was at the Polo Grounds with the Giants and Duke Snider was hitting home runs at Ebbets Field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Now it is just the Yankees and Mets in the big city. And what happened in the ‘50s has never happened with the Yankees and the Mets until now, with Aaron Judge and Pete Alonso.

Darryl Strawberry and Don Mattingly each played his rookie season in the big leagues in 1983. But even though Donnie Baseball hit as many as 35 homers in a season (just four short of Darryl’s 39 -- twice -- in his best years with the Mets), and was a superb all-around player, he was never considered a pure slugger.

Alonso and Judge are. Are they ever.

It is unlikely that anybody is going to write a “Polar Bear and All Rise” song about them the way Terry Cashman famously wrote about Willie, Mickey and The Duke. They have still made this a rare home run time in New York.

So here’s the question about Alonso and Judge: If we were choosing up sides, and you could only pick one of them to come play for your team, who would you pick? Around which slugger would you want to build a team -- not just for one year, but into the future?

Just by the numbers, the two of them are closer than you might think. Judge came along first, and he set the all-time rookie home run record in 2017 with 52, ended up being runner-up to Jose Altuve for the American League MVP Award and won the AL Rookie of the Year Award. Alonso came along two years later, broke Judge’s rookie record with 53 home runs, won the NL Rookie of the Year Award and should have gotten way more NL MVP love from voters than he did.

This year Alonso has hit 32 home runs, knocked in 86, has a batting average of .255 and his OPS is .849. Judge, who is very hot lately, is up to 34 homers, has 84 RBIs and a batting average of .292. His OPS for 2021 is .922.

For Alonso’s three years in the big leagues, his 162-game average is 46 homers and 110 RBIs and a .255 average. Judge’s numbers work out this way over 162 games: 45 home runs, 103 RBIs and a .277 batting average.

Mets fans are always going to pick their guy and Yankees fans are going to go with No. 99. But this is a conversation for all baseball fans, if they got to play general manager, and had to choose.

In a swing-miss world, Alonso has “only” struck out 116 times this season in 504 at-bats. Judge has struck out 144 times in 489 at-bats. Alonso has walked 52 times, Judge 66. Judge has once again become the most indispensable non-pitcher the Yankees have as they make their Wild Card run in the American League.

The Mets? They are still hanging around the fringes of their own Wild Card race, even at two games under .500, and even though their last nine losses have all been by one run, a Major League record. The Mets wouldn’t even be where they are -- both in the NL East and in the NL Wild Card -- if Alonso hadn’t done what he did while waiting for Francisco Lindor to start to look like himself, and before Javier Báez showed up at Citi Field.

It was at the All-Star Game two months ago that Freddie Freeman called Alonso a “special player,” which is high praise coming from a special player like Freeman. Judge has looked pretty special himself, just the last couple of days, hitting a three-run homer in the eighth inning to tie the Twins on a day when the Yankees would come all the way back from a 5-0 hole to win, and then hitting No. 36 on Tuesday night against the Orioles. This he did after experiencing dizziness and having to leave Sunday night’s game.

He described the feeling as “getting my bell rung.” He came right back with home runs, ringing a different kind of bell. He has now hit 153 of them in 555 games with the Yankees. Alonso has hit 101 in his first 354 games with the Mets.

Who do you want more? And with free agency on the horizon for both players (much closer for Judge, who is eligible for free agency after the 2022 season), who would you be more willing to pay the kind of money the Yankees paid to get Gerrit Cole, and the kind of money the Mets paid to keep Lindor?

There is, of course, one more crucial stat to consider, just because Judge has managed to stay on the field this season for the first time since 2017. Over the three seasons that Alonso has played for the Mets, he missed one game in ’18, three in the short season of ’20, has missed 10 this season. So he has been a horse, playing 354 out of the Mets’ last 368 games. Judge has only missed 14 games this season, but that is after missing 50 in ’18, 60 in ’19 and missing 32 games out of the 60 in 2020.

Alonso doesn’t turn 27 until December. Judge turns 30 next April. Judge is the face of the Yankees again. Alonso is the face of the Mets, especially with Jacob deGrom hurt.

Who would you rather have? Polar Bear or All Rise: Hitting balls out of sight in New York the way Willie, Mickey and The Duke once did.