It was April 14, 1986, and the Mets were playing the Cardinals at Shea Stadium. The Mets had already lost two in a row after winning their first two games of the season; if they lost again, they would move below .500.

The game was in extras, and neither team could score. Tim Teufel struck out with a man on second in the 10th; in the 11th, Gary Carter walked, but could go no further; in the 12th, Rick Aguilera walked and went to second on a wild pitch, but Lenny Dykstra couldn’t drive him in.

The Cardinals batted in the top of the 13th, and with one out, a grounder to Howard Johnson at third could have turned into an inning-ending double play. Instead, he missed it. Two runs scored, and by the end of the inning, two more had come in. The Mets faded quietly in the bottom of the 13th, and just like that, they’d lost their home opener 6-2.

“The Cardinals emerged with a 6-2 victory,” wrote Jim Naughton in the Daily News, “and the Mets were left to contemplate why a team from which so much is expected has, thus far, accomplished so little.” The paper labeled what the Mets were going through a “three game tailspin.”

In his column, Mike Lupica wrote that the Mets were playing without spirit.

“They do not seem to understand that all of the National League East, hell, all of the National League, is gunning for them,” he wrote. “If the Mets could have gotten more than four scratch singles, they would be 3-2 today… It is not too early to ask baseball’s cover boys to start playing like these games count.

“No panic here,” he concluded. “Of course the Mets are still a terrific group with all the proper tools to win. It’s just that since last Tuesday, they have set the wrong tone for a season so eagerly anticipated.”

So what happened next? Fans of the 1986 Mets will remember: the Mets won their next 11 games, and 18 of their next 19, and by May 10, were 20-4 and led the NL East by five games and had pretty much locked up the division 24 games into the season.

Which brings us to the 2021 Mets. Maybe you’re less worried after Thursday’s wild walk-off hit-by-pitch, or maybe you’re even more freaked out, because that’s the kind of thing that seems to make the baseball gods mad, and now Michael Conforto will definitely get thrown at when the Mets play again on Saturday, and the Marlins will be so angry that they’ll take the rest of the series on pure malice. Either way, take a lesson from the 1986 Mets — and take a deep breath.

The first four games of the season are just that: four games of the season. They’re not darkly symbolic, and they don’t portent an onslaught of losses. Trevor May was never going to have a perfect season, and unless you thought he would go the entire year without blowing a single lead, there’s no reason to be alarmed that he allowed two runs on opening day.

Francisco Lindor is batting .214 — did you think he would go the entire season without batting .214 over a four-game stretch? Dominic Smith is stuck at .250, Michael Conforto at .176, James McCann right with Lindor at .214, Jeff McNeil at a ghastly .091. May’s ERA is 7.71, and Jeurys Familia and Aaron Loup both have even 9.00 marks.

But the only reason these numbers stand out is that they’re the first numbers you see. Michael Conforto has bad four-game stretches all the time; usually they’re in the middle of the season, and fans barely notice because a “bad stretch” means his OPS falls from .884 to .871, or something like that. It’s the beginning of the season, so the numbers look bad — but they’ll be just fine.

Here’s how you can convince yourself of that, even if you’re not sure you believe it. Just think back to the 2019 Mets home opener, when Keon Broxton singled in the go-ahead run, raising his OPS for the year to .990 and winning the hearts of Mets fans. Is that how you remember Broxton now? Does anyone remember what he did the first week of the 2019 season?

Of course not. It’s just a week. The Mets will have good weeks and bad ones, and just because a few bad games came first doesn’t mean they’re a sign of things to come. Once the Mets start winning, May’s ERA over the first 2 1/3 innings of the season will be the last thing on anybody’s mind. No panic here: the Mets are still a terrific group, with all the proper tools to win.