The Mets are certainly living right these days. That was obvious Wednesday night, when blew a 7-1 lead to the lowly Nationals at Shea Stadium but thanks to David Wright (pictured) still came away with a wild-and-wooly 13-10 win, expanding their NL East lead to a season-high 3 1/2 games. Colleague Larry Brooks writes that Jerry Manueldeserves much of the credit for the Mets’ rebirth since late June.

The Nationals’ Elijah Dukes was quite the one-man circus Wednesday night.

In the notebook, Aaron Heilman tried to explain away another awful outing by revealing a season-long battle with knee tendinits. There are also items on Jose Reyes, Mike Pelfrey and Billy Wagner.