At the top, a reminder: Sports is not life and death. As a close corollary, let’s remember that even baseball — while it seems that way sometime — is definitely not life and death, although it does try to trick you periodically.

Don’t miss Mike Puma’s text messages from Queens and beyond — he’s giving Sports+ subscribers the inside buzz on the Mets.

That’s especially true if your team experiences the kind of year the Mets have. And one thing has occurred to me in the past few weeks, as correspondence from readers who happen to be Mets fans have grown more numerous and more frantic.

In a season like this, in real time, you really do go through something akin to the five stages of grief. Nothing has died since things started to go south for them on Flag Day — unless you want to count hope. Hope has taken a besting among Mets fans who will fill Citi Field 3 million strong for the first time in 16 years, a hope based largely on last season’s run and the start to this season. It is hope that feels reduced to a deathbed in these last weeks of the season.

And Mets fans have had to daily deal with the stages of dealing with that.