NEW YORK — Considering the disparate directions the Giants’ and Mets’ seasons have taken so far, it should have come as no surprise.

Before the ball had even found a landing spot, eventually settling on the batter’s eye in center field, the air had been sucked out of the 30,116 spectators at Citi Field, who braved smokey skies from Canadian wildfires to see something that’s become a regular occurrence this season.

The Giants’ lineup woke up late to erase an early deficit.

The Mets’ bullpen blew a late lead.

And the big hit came from none other than rookie catcher Patrick Bailey, who hammered a hanging breaking ball from David Robertson 432 feet to center field for a three-run homer that completed San Francisco’s comeback in a 5-4 win in the opening game of its weekend series in New York.

“That was as good as it gets,” manager Gabe Kapler said, breaking with his typically even-keeled nature to downplay expectations for a young player. “That was superstar-caliber stuff.”

Bailey has delivered consistently since being called up on May 19, and frequently in clutch spots. But never on a stage bigger than the Big Apple. He just missed the literal big apple in center field, his three-run shot landing a few feet to the left.

“With Robertson pitching, everything’s kind of moving in,” Bailey said of his approach. “So just trying to get something up (in the strike zone) and off (the plate). I saw the first breaking ball off the plate a little bit, so it was nice to see it. And then the second one was a good pitch to hit and I was able to put a good swing on it.”

Robertson and his Mets teammates left the field to a chorus of boos. The Mets lost after holding a lead for the 13th time in June alone. The Giants completed their eighth comeback of the season after trailing entering the eighth inning, seven since the start of this month.

The win snapped a brief two-game skid after dropping their final two games in Toronto and seemed to awaken the Giants’ offense from a long Canadian slumber. Before Bailey’s homer, the Giants had scored only four runs on 16 hits in their past 25 innings. Since reeling off 10 straight wins, the Giants had lost four of their seven games since entering Friday and three of their past four, failing to score more than three runs in any of them.

But Bailey accounted for that total in one swing and proved their magic was still alive.

The 24-year-old backstop came to bat in the top of the eighth after Joc Pederson reached on an error by first baseman Pete Alonso, who made a diving stop but flubbed the throw, and a free pass to J.D. Davis, who worked a walk after falling into a 2-2 count, laying off two pitches just below the strike zone.

Collecting his fifth homer and 26th RBIs of the season, Bailey is the first Giants rookie to reach those totals in his first 33 games since Willie McCovey, joining a group of five players in franchise history that also includes Orlando Cepeda and Willie Mays. It doesn’t feature any catchers, especially any with the defensive abilities of Bailey.

After the Mets put the tying run on base against Camilo Doval in the ninth, Bailey fired a perfect throw to second base to catch Starling Marte, snapping a streak of 35 straight successful stolen base attempts by the Mets. He has thrown out 11 of 28 attempted base stealers since being called up, a 39% success rate that nearly doubles the league average.

In the words of Alex Cobb, who gave San Francisco five innings in his return from the injured list: “Patty Bails single-handedly put us on his back.”

Credit to Doval, too, who has struggled to control the running game but made a 1.35-second delivery to the plate, giving Bailey a chance to get the out. Bailey said he knew Marte would take off, trying to use his speed to put the tying run in scoring position once he entered as a pinch-runner for Luis Guillorme, whom Doval put on base with a one-out walk. Kapler also gave a shout out to third base coach Mark Hallberg, whose purview includes Giants’ pitchers work with base runners.

“The other thing that was going on in that play was a huge bit of development for Camilo Doval,” Kapler said of his closer, who recorded his 24th save of the season, tied for the MLB lead. “I don’t think that was something that Camilo was doing for a good portion of the last three years. He’s competing with the hitter at the plate and he’s competing with the base runners. He’s just a complete closer in that way now.”

Cobb pitched well in his first start since June 13 (oblique strain) but departed after five innings and 79 pitches, trailing 3-2. He said he came out fine physically.

The Mets took the lead in the fifth, when a double down the left-field line from Jeff McNeil was interfered with by a young fan in Giants jersey. Brandon Nimmo, who started on first base after a one-out single, was awarded home. Kapler challenged the placement of the runners unsuccessfully.

During the break in the action, Sabol went over to the stands and talked to the fan, giving him a fist-bump before retaking his position.

“I felt bad for the kid there,” Sabol said. “He had a whole stadium booing him. I looked over and saw him just sinking further and further into his chair. I think we all have had situations where we had a mistake like that. I think he was just a kid excited at a baseball game, just trying to get a baseball.

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“I ran over there and the first thing he said was, ‘I’m so sorry!’ I said, ‘Hey, you don’t need to say sorry. You don’t need to apologize. It’s all good. Don’t listen to everyone booing here. Have fun. Put a smile on your face.’ That’s when I just gave him a fist-bump. Hopefully that made him feel better. I just felt bad.”

Resurfacing a side character from last season, Tommy Pham scored two of the Mets’ four runs and did more than slap a two-strike sweeper from Taylor Rogers in the sixth inning. He hammered it 411 feet, at 105.4 mph off the bat, reaching the facade of the second deck in left field as it hooked around the foul pole. The homer, Rogers’ first earned run allowed since May 19 (13 consecutive scoreless outings), gave the Mets a 4-2 lead but proved not to be enough insurance.

Wilmer Flores, one of three Giants back in their former ballpark, generated a mixed reaction from the crowd with a solo shot in the fifth inning. Clearly still holding a place in the hearts of Mets fans, Flores tied the score at 2 with a line-drive home run to left-center that didn’t generate nearly the vitriol from the New York crowd that an opponent’s success normally would. It was Flores’ second homer at Citi Field since leaving in free agency in 2018.