Mets have given fans reason to dream one more time

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 ...