Mets had a perfect response after getting bullied in NLCS opener

They were flattened by a haymaker.You can blame jet lag.

You can blame Jack Flaherty, who pitched the game of his life.You can blame the crowd of Angelinos who tried their best to replicate on the Dodgers’ behalf at Chavez Ravine what the Mets enjoyed back in Queens last week. You can blame any manner of things.

But the harsh truth was this: the Mets played nine innings Sunday night looking like they belonged anywhere other than the National League Championship Series.Put it this way: if there’s a forfeit in a major league baseball game, the official score is 9-0. That was the official score of Game 1, too, the Dodgers looking like the varsity club, the Mets like the JV.The Mets needed to react to the bullying the way we’re always taught you’re supposed to from the first day of kindergarten: bully the bully.

He throws an uppercut, you throw a straight right.Channel Sean Connery as Jim Malone in “The Untouchables”: “They send one of yours to the hospital, you send two of theirs to the morgue!” The Mets may not have sent the Dodgers to the coroner’s office Monday afternoon at Dodger Stadium.

But they did send a message back to the Dodgers, seizing a 6-0 lead after two innings and grinding out a 7-3 win that ties the NLCS at 1 and 1, sends the teams back to Citi Field, which promises to be a madhouse Wednesday, with the Mets presently owning home-field advantage. “We wanted to make some noise,” Francisco Lindor said, and of course he made sure to take a New Year’s Eve set of pots and pans straight to the crowd of 52,926, jangling them and the Dodgers with a brilliant eight-pitch at-bat leading off the game that was capped by a home run to right field off L.A.’s opener, Ryan Brasier. “I was trying to get a good pitch to hit,” Lindor said, “and I got one.” And when he did, it had the predictable effect on the rest of the lineup.You could see the Mets exhale.

You could see it in starter Sean Manaea, who cruised through the ope...