After seven innings of one-run ball, Wheeler departed. In walked the bullpen arsonists. All season long the team’s relief pitchers have lugged jugs of kerosene to the mound.

The eighth inning began this way: A walk, a balk and a wild pitch, followed by a double that tied the score. Just like that, Wheeler’s fine work had gone for naught. The next inning Seth Lugo, the team’s putative closer save for the fact that his elbow rarely allows him to pitch on consecutive days, took the mound for the second consecutive day and gave up a double. An inning later a Dodgers hitter, Jedd Gyorko, trundled a .183 batting average to the plate. Surely he would not get a hit, but he did, slapping a single and knocking in the winning run. The Dodgers won, 3-2.

The temptation was to proclaim a stake plunged into Dracula’s heart. After another loss on Monday, a 9-4 defeat in Colorado, the Mets sat five games back with 12 to play.

But those little heartbreakers have cheated death for two months. The first half of this season mixed the soporific with the dispiriting until in late July the Mets ripped off a winning streak, and soon fans piled into this handsome stadium by Flushing Bay, bellowing and chanting.

Win or loss, strangeness ruled. When in Vermont two weeks ago, I lay on a Lake Champlain beach with my younger son, Aidan, peering at the Milky Way and listening to Howie Rose paint a Mets game for us. When the Mets led, 10-4, at the end of eight innings, I walked to the cottage, figuring this one at least was in the bag.