If you want to have an understanding just how badly Mets fans want to fall in love with Max Scherzer, all you need to do is hit the rewind button a few weeks, back to Monday, March 21, Roger Dean Stadium. It was Scherzer’s first appearance as a Met, which alone had brought a sizeable number of Mets fans to Jupiter.

And they got what they’d hoped for: after two innings, a run and a couple of strikeouts, Scherzer walked to the dugout and the Mets fans in attendance gave him a nice, warm, rousing ovation. Not a bad first impression.

Then he came out for the third inning.

The crowd buzzed: three innings? First outing of spring? It seemed like a mirage but Scherzer got the Marlins out 1-2-3. Scherzer walked off the mound and the reaction was even louder this time. Good stuff. The fans scanned the scorecard and then the bullpen looking for who was warming up. Nobody was warming up.

He came out for the fourth inning.

Now, according to a fan who was there, “the people were berserk. It was impossible to believe.” Scherzer struck out Jesus Sanchez, Avisail Garcia and Joey Wendle, around a double to Jesus Aguilar. Strike three to Wendle sounded a lot similar to September than to March. Four innings! Scherzer walked off the mound, bathed in adulation.

And walked back out a few minutes later.

“By now,” the fan says, “it was like a rock concert.”

The fifth inning was another 1-2-3: a fly ball and two lineouts. And, finally, that was it. Five innings in the first outing of spring? Who was the last pitcher to do that, Walter Johnson? Scherzer shrugged.

“I threw a lot of strikes,” he said. “I got some work in.”

We spend a lot of time working on theses and postulates, trying to determine what athletes “get” New York and which don’t, which are wired to the rhythms and patterns of Fun City and which are destined to yearn for Kansas City. There is no one equation to figure that out. But here’s one easy way you can cut through the waiting time and hold New York in the palm of your hand:

Put in an honest day’s work, and then maybe a little more.

“It’s not his first time around,” Mets manager Buck Showalter said that night.

It is why the news of Scherzer’s tweaked hamstring hit many Mets fans in a different place than the usual numbing array of injury news has slammed them in recent years. These last seven seasons the Mets have seen the other side of Scherzer, the opposing side, the snarl on his face and the hop in his step after he strikes a hitter out.

As a National, it often seemed Scherzer wasn’t content merely getting you out; he wanted to take something from you, too: your swag, your confidence, your conviction. And he would do this just as merrily — sometimes moreso — later in games, as 100 pitches came and went, as he would in the first inning when the right arm was freshly fueled.

So Tuesday morning felt like an awfully momentous day. Scherzer opted for one of the indoor mounds at Clover Park, so no prying eyes could play amateur physician and see if he was favoring the hammy, or if it seemed like heater was in repose.

“The ball makes louder noises in there, and the music reverberates more,” said Showalter, who hasn’t lost a step all these years later as the master of deadpan.

Two important things emerged with Scherzer after his bullpen session.

It’s one thing to bare a bulldog’s teeth when you’re fighting for a roster spot. It’s something else entirely to be that way $221 million already in the bank, and with $130 million or so coming the next three years. New York rarely cares how much you make; New York simply wants you to earn it.

Success helps. So does sweat equity. The Mets get both in Scherzer. And now, with luck, get him Friday, too.