Playoff baseball means plenty of pregaming for Mets fans at Citi Field

"Cowbell Man" and "Pinman," — he of the many Met pins — were around here somewhere, the Bead Man said Wednesday at a Mets Block Party outside Citi Field, the warm sun glinting softly off his many orange and blue devotees.

"For each game I come to, I have a really large bag of beads and I sort through them — whichever ones have a good vibe, and I put those on," said the self-proclaimed bead man, who in civilian life is Michael Bielawa, 64, a writer and librarian in Bridgeport, Connecticut.

From a bag of about 200 necklaces he keeps in his car, Bielawa had chosen half a dozen. He’s been doing the bead thing "for years and years."

"I joined the Mets in the 60s and I loved the Mets starting in ‘73." That was the year "they went from last place to first place in a matter of about a month," he said.

That Mets team, like other lovable versions before or since, beat the odds, taking down the powerful Cincinnati Reds, who'd won the National League pennant a year earlier. The Mets would go on to lose the World Series to the Oakland A's in seven games.

"They were on the cusp, and that was sheer willpower," Bielawa said of the '73 Mets. "They became, in my opinion, the everyperson’s team, where a group of regular, ordinary, talented folks can come together and do something extraordinary."

A few hours to go before the Mets took on the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game Three of the National League Championship Series Wednesday night, thousands of fans gathered outside the stadium by Jackie Robinson Rotunda. Mr. and Mrs. Met were scheduled to appear. There was music and pizza.

Near where Bead Man held court but not in apparent competition, Stefanie Nelkens, 58, a math tutor from Plainview, gave out beaded bracelets: purple and black for Grimace, the McDonald’s mascot appropriated this year by Mets fans, blue and orange for the classic look.

Nelkens said she started making them last week as good luck bracelets and kept going because they obviously worked.

"I just want to keep spreading the good luck," she said, "and enjoying and having a good time at the games."

A member of the 7 Line Army, a Mets fan group, Nelkens said she’d given bracelets to team greats Bartolo Colon and Bobby Ojeda and to owner Steven Cohen at a public appearance Cohen made last week. According to Nelkens, their conversation was short but cordial. "We’re giving these out on the 7 Line and I would love for you to have one," she said.

"I guess I should," Cohen said in response.

Anchoring the block party were many food trucks and one pizza fire engine, Pizza Company 7.

"We do private parties, Citi Field and many fire department events," said John Zozzaro, 52, of Glen Cove, who drives the engine and makes pizzas in the oven built into its side. He bought the fire engine used at auction eight years ago for a price he declined to disclose, though "we paid more for the oven than for the truck."

Zozzaro offered fare such as the "Firehouse Margherita," the "FDNY" and the $22 "Greasefire," so-called because of its charred pepperoni. Zozzaro is a fan — his two rescue dogs are named Seaver and Piazza — but he has been working too hard to watch any games live. He’d drive back out to the Island by the 4th or 5th inning, listening to Mets broadcaster Howie Rose call the game on the radio before he gets home to make the next day’s dough.

Cowbell Man appeared at the pregame block party — "nice guy and very talented with a cowbell," Bielawa said, — as did Connie Fisher, 84.

"I’m one of those crazy fans," she said. Fisher, of Oyster Bay, used to own the Carvel in Lindenhurst and told a familiar and only-in-New York baseball story: She rooted for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

"When the Dodgers left, I went to the Mets," she said. " ... I’m a Met fan through and through." This year, "we never thought they’d make it. But look where we are now."