It’s OK to dream now. It is. It’s OK to start playing little games in your head, connecting dots, conjuring best-case scenarios. It’s OK to feel good about Sean Manaea against a bullpen game with the Dodgers in Game 6, especially after the way it went last time. And, sure: it’s OK to start thinking, ever so cautiously, about what might loom after that.
It’s OK. It is. The Mets have given you that much. Friday, the Mets proved that they wanted to get back on the plane to Los Angeles every bit as much as you wanted them to. Pete Alonso’s first-inning blast started the party. Six solid outs from Edwin Diaz ended it.
In between, a brigade of Mets provided every big hit that was missing the last two games. There was a little drama, sure, because the Dodgers are relentless, and because the Mets can always reliably provide you a little more stress than you care for. But every time they crawled closer, the Mets pulled farther away.
By the end it was Mets 12, Dodgers 6.
By the end there were 43,841 true believers who’d begun the day singing “My Girl” along with the real-life Temptations and left it humming “Meet the Mets,” knowing that there’ll be more baseball Sunday night back in L.A. They were already dreaming, sure, and why not? The Mets are back in play. They’re back in the picture.
It’s OK to dream. It is.
“We’ve been facing elimination for a month,” said Diaz, who retired six of the seven Dodgers to face him including the terrifying troika of Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. “We had to do our jobs. We did our jobs.”
They did. Now they get at least two more days of baseball season. Five days after the Dodgers’ Jack Flaherty made the Mets look like a JV team, suffocating them over seven innings in Game 1, the Mets raked Flaherty, roughed him up, busted out to leads of 3-0 and 8-1.
David Peterson started it all. Facing second-and-third, nobody out, many of the fans having yet to sip their leadoff beers, he got a huge break when Ohtani inexplicably failed to break from third on Teoscar Hernandez’s grounder to short.
The Dodgers had been on the brink of silencing the crowd early for a third straight game, but now Freeman hit a laser that landed in Alonso’s glove, and Peterson fanned Tommy Edman, who’s been a stone in the Mets’ shoe all series long. The crowd erupted. The Mets were still breathing.
“Focus on executing one pitch at a time,” Peterson said. He would tire later, wouldn’t make it to the end of the fourth, but with those eight pitches that slammed the first-inning door on the Dodgers he’d done his part. “It’s a privilege and an honor to get the ball in those situations. I never take that for granted.”
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Mets in the postseason:
A few minutes later, Alonso hit one into orbit, and when it landed it was 3-0. The Mets were determined to get on the plane, to make it for their scheduled workout Saturday afternoon. They were committed to keeping this crazy story going. And on it goes.
“It changed the vibe in the dugout, seeing what Pete does best,” said Francisco Lindor, whom the video board earlier showed singing along to the Temps to the overwhelming delight of the crowd, and who singled off Flaherty to set the table for Alonso. He’d vowed that the Mets weren’t going to go gently on Thursday.
On Friday, he helped make it so.
“We have to believe in each other,” he said. “You have to believe in what’s happening here. If you don’t believe you shouldn’t be here.”
So the Mets believed. The crowd believed, and kept the decibel level on 11 even if they had a couple of moments when they reached for the Rolaids in their pockets, even when Andy Pages kept planting rocket shots over the left field wall.
(Dodgers who have hit two home runs in a postseason game: Duke Snider, twice; and Andy Pages. That’s it. That’s the list.)
Carlos Mendoza made two key lineup changes that paid off, Jesse Winker reaching base three times, scoring three runs, delivering an RBI triple that nearly caused Citi to drown out the airplanes landing next door at LaGuardia. Jeff McNeil had two RBIs on two sac flies, the second of which allowed the ballpark to exhale after Mookie Betts had homered off Ryne Stanek to cut the Mets lead to 10-6.
And, oh yes: the kid Mendoza has stuck by, Francisco Alvarez, had three hits and an RBI, which makes it four hits for him since some — your humble narrator at the front of that line — had suggested he should take a seat.
“We have momentum,” Alvarez said. “You can feel it.”
Sure you can. The Mets get one more airplane flight. They get one more game, at least, and two more days of season, at the least. Listen to them. Really listen. They really do believe.
“We can beat them,” Diaz said without a trace of braggadocio, just belief.
Why can’t they? And why can’t you start to dream? It’s fine to do that now. It’s OK. It is.
