There is one note-perfect scene in the movie “Fever Pitch” — the America remake, that is — that every sports fan understands. Jimmy Fallon and his fellow Red Sox fans are drowning their sorrows after Game 3 of the 2004 ALCS. They are disconsolate. They are depressed. The Sox are down 0-3 in the best of seven, and winter beckons.

Then they notice a few tables away: There’s Johnny Damon. There’s Jason Varitek. There’s a few other Sox and they’re … they’re laughing. They’re drinking wine. They’re scarfing down dinner. They sure seem to be having a hell of a lot better time than Fallon and his crew.

It is a perfect scene because that is exactly how it is. Fans obsess. Fans fret. Fans stare at the ceiling at 4 in the morning. Fans are forever scrambling the batting order in their daydreams while pretending to pay attention to the meeting they’re in. Sometimes people are bothered when fans use the second-person talking about their teams.

“… We’re in big trouble now. It’s not like us to play this poorly. …”

But I say fans not only are a part of the team, they perform one of the most important tasks: They worry, and fret, and obsess, and guzzle Maalox, so the players don’t have to.

“We looked at it this way: Just win today, win again tonight,” Chris Bassitt said inside the visitor’s clubhouse at PNC Park on Wednesday afternoon, in between the Mets’ bookend beatings of the Pirates, 5-1 and 10-0.

Bassitt wore a thin, bemused smile. Of course he knew what was happening elsewhere in Mets Nation, which had met the dawn for the first time since April’s first trimester with company in first place in the NL East, the Braves finally having caught the Mets long after midnight Tuesday in the East.

“I’m sure the world was going crazy,” Bassitt said, and he was probably underselling it based on some of the hilarious position papers that appeared on social media after the three straight losses to the Bucs and the Nats that preceded Wednesday’s twin bill.

“But we’re fine,” he said. “I understand the standings and I understand how well the Braves are playing, but we can only control what we can control. We worry about us. That’s it.”

One prosperous day in Pittsburgh doesn’t mean the Mets are on the other side of their offensive struggles, of course. But it sure helped change the conversation around this team, which did look a bit tight and out of sorts Tuesday as the Bucs kept pounding away at them. And on Wednesday looked like the Mets who have mostly played .625 ball this year after their fifth doubleheader sweep of the year.

It sure allowed for more postgame smiles Wednesday than Tuesday. The teams about whom fans obsess have their own issues in times of trouble, after all. Nobody enjoys failure, even in a game that’s defined by it. If they don’t stay awake at night fearful of the Braves, they have their own demons, their own concerns.

“This is a hard game,” Buck Showalter said Wednesday, for perhaps the thousandth time since Port St. Lucie. It’s a hard game for players to succeed at. It’s a hard mission to put together a winning team. And even the best teams suffer. The Mets were suffering.

Then Bassitt and Jacob deGrom spent the day throwing BBs at the Buccos. Then Tyler Naquin, of all people, smoked a clutch three-run homer that seemed to unlock the offense, replete with crooked numbers galore.

The day wasn’t a complete joyride. The Braves spotted the A’s a 2-0 lead before stomping them in Oakland, 7-2, so they kept up their end of the daily pursuit (though the Mets are guaranteed to wake up the next two days back by themselves in first place, by the mandatory minimum of a half-game).

Starling Marte’s hand is going to keep him out of the lineup a few more days. Max Scherzer landed on the IL — he called his left-side issues a problem that’ll be “days, not weeks” — and though you can understand the abundance of caution it still means, the Mets will be without one of their most dangerous weapons for the next 10 days or so.

So not perfect. But who ever said perfect was even a possibility? The Mets will savor a day off Thursday. And Mets fans will maybe take a moment to exhale. They should. Fretting as a full-time avocation can take a lot out of you, and there’s still plenty of season ahead.