Ask a group of Mets fans to name the worst moment of the team’s 53-year history and brace for a lengthy exercise in one-downmanship, as they argue the relative horrors of bad trades, blown leads and terrible performances on the field and at the plate.

For many fans, however, there has been no nadir so much as one vast slough of underachievement, made all the more difficult to bear when viewed against the near-perennial glories of their crosstown rivals, the Yankees.

To call them rivals, though, has been something of a misnomer, much like equating Kraft Singles and Camembert because they are both called cheese. The Yankees — with 27 World Series titles, an enormous payroll of household names and a global following — tend to win. The Mets do not.

But the winds of fortune that have blown forever in favor of Yankee Stadium in the South Bronx appear to have reversed course somewhere over the East River and are gusting toward the Mets’ Citi Field in Flushing, Queens, six and a half miles away. And Mets fans have entered the new season with an unfamiliar confidence.