Pete Crow-Armstrong is still climbing the mountain of superstardom.

[READ: Cubs’ Pete Crow-Armstrong reveals MLB All-Star Game moment he wants most]

On a day when he’s set to make his All-Star Game debut as the NL’s starting center fielder, GQ Sports dropped an exclusive interview with the Cubs’ budding franchise cornerstone.

At 23 years old, Crow-Armstrong is skyrocketing in national popularity and has hardly put a foot wrong on the baseball field this season — but he revealed to GQ’s Matthew Roberson that he made a huge mistake five years ago when he was a freshly-drafted first-rounder out of high school.

“I showed up late for my COVID test on the very first day! My very first day showing face as the first-rounder, slept two hours late,” he said of the first impression he made as a member of the New York Mets.

It was a slip-up almost so costly that Crow-Armstrong was scolded by the Mets’ farm director, who had a hand in drafting him.

“He was like, ‘Dude, if you ever do this again, you’re not going to play,” Crow-Armstrong told Roberson.

Four years, a new team and a blockbuster deal later, Crow-Armstrong has played plenty — that much is an understatement.

But still, as he sat down to speak to GQ Sports just this past weekend when the Cubs were in New York City to play the Yankees, Crow-Armstrong discussed how his life might have been different had he stayed in the Big Apple with the Yankees’ crosstown rivals.

Writes Roberson in the piece:

“All the time,” he says, repeating it for emphasis, when I ask how often his mind wanders to the subject of being a Met. “It’s really easy, too, because I got friends out here, and it’s easy to picture how fun that could have been.”

But before Cubs fans clutch their pearls, what Crow-Armstrong said about Chicago immediately after should be proof enough that he’s very happy being both the Cubs’ and the city’s golden child.

Writes Roberson:

At the same time, he’s eager to make one thing clear: Chicago has his whole heart. “I think it’s also easy to just be like, ‘Yeah, you’re in the best city.’ Chicago’s like the perfect little bit of everything.”

Included in that perfection is the place where Crow-Armstrong gets to play the game he loves for half the season. When Roberson asked him about the atmosphere at Wrigley Field this season, the young superstar didn’t hold back:

“It’s the first time I’ve gotten to see Wrigley like this,” Crow-Armstrong explains. “I mean, they pack the f—ing place out all the time. But it’s [different] when you’re winning and packing the place out—there’s a real buzz and rumble that goes on.”

The dust will soon settle from the All-Star Game festivities, which means it won’t be long before Crow-Armstrong and the Cubs get back on the playoff push — and feel a sold-out Wrigley Field rocking once again.