What Bill Parcells said 35 years ago still holds true: There are no medals for trying in professional sports. There are no consolation prizes.

“Show me a good loser,” George Steinbrenner liked to say, “and I’ll show you a loser.”

Yes. That’s all fair. That’s all fine. And by now, unless you have the rosiest glasses around, you’ve probably already raced through baseball’s version of the five stages of grief, all the way from denial to acceptance.

That’s how good the Dodgers are and they’ve played their best for most of this National League Championship Series. The Mets aren’t that good and have had to be at their best and sharpest to keep the Dodgers in their sights, and they haven’t been close. Crazy things happen in sports. This would be certifiable.

So this must be the hope now: that the Mets can give you one last summer cramp in the sun late Friday afternoon. May they avert the inevitable and continue this beautiful ride for two more days. It’s going to take something approaching superior numbers to beat the Dodgers 10-2 three straight after the beating they took in this game.

Three in a row, 3-1 down? Order a miracle.

But one in a row?

The Mets can win one in a row. It’s baseball. The White Sox defeated the Guardians five times this year. They beat the Yankees once. They only won 35 other games all year, but managed to win six against the top two teams in their league. Of course, the Mets can beat the Dodgers on Friday afternoon, no matter how wide the gap between them looked the last two nights.

And that would be right. That would be appropriate. The fans who will fill Citi Field for the third time in a row, and for the fifth time in the last eight days, deserve so much. That includes the Mets, who have reminded everyone what an acoustic delight their home ballpark can be in October, who must do all they can to ensure this is a perennial event and not a blip, as too often is happened.

“We’ve had our backs against the walls before and again now, and we’re going to do our best to add to the story and create more magic,” says Brandon Nimmo, the one-man microcosm of the world. The Mets struggle right now, barely able to run yet running hard enough to beat a double play that scored the Mets final run. “It won’t be easy, but nothing happened with what we did, so it’s a fitting end to the story.”

They both deserve another day in the sun, a few more “My Girl” sing-alongs when Francisco Lindor steps up to the plate (and a few more “M! V! P!” chants to punctuate those at-bats). They need a few more big swings from young third baseman Mark Vientos, who has picked October as the most opportunistic time to reach his star.

And of course, they still owe a few more appearances – and why not, maybe a rocket or two – from Pete Alonso, as it’s not clear what will happen between him and the Mets in the coming weeks. months.

Most of the time, it would feel wrong to end this magic carpet ride with a home cleaning. We get it: the Dodgers didn’t win those 98 games in a lottery. They didn’t bounce back from the brink of elimination against the Padres by accident. They’re good. They’re damn good. They have the most electric offensive player in the sport, Shohei Ohtani, leading the way, and they have Mookie Betts – just a step or three behind him – batting second.

They have an assembly line of living weapons in the bullpen. They have set up grinders behind their stars, one after the other, and they refuse to swing at balls that are even an inch outside the strike zone. The core has been tempered and hardened by many of their own disappointments in October, and is looking a lot stronger.

There’s a reason why Steve Cohen is frantically trying to build his own model of the Dodger Way and slap a “Mets” logo on it. The Dodgers are who the Mets want to be. And this year, the Mets have taken some big steps in that direction. But this run has not been a fluke, and the fourth loss that is shaping up to be inevitable will not be a disaster.

But the Mets can make the Dodgers work for it. They can give Citi Field another day in the sun and give everyone another happy recap. At the very least, they could fly the Dodgers 3,000 miles to earn their champagne, then take their chances at old Dodger Stadium.

We thought all along that they were going to have a hard time sneaking into the playoffs, these Mets. The Brewers found that out the hard way. So did the Phillies. It only feels right that if the Dodgers are going to take their victory lap, they should do it on Pacific Time. After all, it is always sunny there.

Not here. The Mets will get one last day in the sun on Friday. They might as well make the most of it.