Coming off the NL pennant win with hopes of doing it again (and beyond), the ballpark in Flushing is gonna be more crowded than usual this season.

But there’s still plenty of room if you go as I always like to – on chilly weeknights in April and May.

You can pretty much sit where you want – for cheap – until the kids get out of school for the summer.

I’ve gone on two of the last three Tuesday nights. As long as you have a hood on your jacket to block the brisk wind that whistles through the building, and some beer, you’re good.

I went with my co-worker Paul last night. After watching a couple of innings from our assigned seats, we slipped into a wind-protected section down the first base line with economy-sized cans of brewski and a bag of peanuts in the shell.

Paulie was on the brink of exiting early but then Cespedes came off the bench bottom seven and ripped a three-run line drive home run to LF that tied the score at three. The Captain would knock home the go-ahead score that same inning.

The Cess rip was really dramatic and unexpected. The Mets had looked dead offensively throughout the night but then Lagares drew a one-out walk and Plawecki ripped a singe to center. That brought us to the pitcher’s spot in the order. Collins had already used Campbell and only had Duda, DeAza and the new backup catcher Rivera on the bench. Duda went into the on-deck circle and started swinging a bat but he’s not great against lefties. The Reds manager went out to talk to the Cinci starter Finnegan who was approaching 100 pitches.

We didn’t learn until later that the lengthy mound visit actually bought Collins some time to find Cespedes who couldn’t be located in either the dugout or clubhouse immediately. Next thing you know, Cess is popping out of the dugout in barely enough time to take on the assignment despite everybody’s impression he was unavailable. Cue “Hasta Que Se Seque El Malecon” and then #52 slammed the first pitch over the orange tape stripe in left. It got out so quick, a lot of fans didn’t know it was gone until they showed the replay on the board. Three of the four umps were twirling their index fingers soon after it bounced back into play. It was a serious screamer. 3-3 was the score all of a sudden thanks to a guy who had just had fluid removed from his right leg and was supposed to miss the entire series at least.

They announced attendance at 25. It was probably more like 15. But it was a fun crowd. Loud and energetic. They did the wave in the ninth. Cowbell Man came through our section in that frame posing for dozens of photos. He relishes his growing adulation. A piped-in cowbell sound through the loud-speakers overlaps with what Man is creating when he’s not mugging for the cell phone cameras.

The Mets will be right there again at the end. You already know about the rotation. The save man looks like he’s hungry for another 75 appearances and you’ve got Blevins, Bastardo, Henderson and Reed trying to patch it together in the 7th and 8th if need be. Verrett has been great. And the lineup is pretty good.

There was talk Terry would sit Conforto against lefties to give Lagares some time but thankfully Conforto’s stick is so sweet right now, it’s forcing Collins to pencil Conforts in every day regardless. Conforto has a beautiful stroke and great composure. His walk-up music is questionable (The Hills by The Weeknd) but whatever it takes.

Neil Walker is a major defensive upgrade at second compared to Murph and is hitting for power so far.

One observation on the Reds last night: Billy Hamilton made one of the best catches in center field I’ve seen in a long time on a Plawecki line-driver in the fifth. He got to the ball quick and then dove full out on the sprint to make a grab few fielders could dream about.

-Dan Boyle’s face-to-face verbal attack on Post reporter Larry Brooks Tuesday just before the hockey Rangers went home for the summer is the kind of media relations meltdown rarely seen from a NHL player. Brooks writes primarily under the columnist banner and so his prolific work in the Post is often full of opinion. Brooks can be tough on a bad performer but he’s fair. Boyle didn’t like what both Brooks and Post sportswriter Brett Cyrgalis had written about his disappointing stint with the Rangers culminating with his healthy scratch Saturday in Pittsburgh. Boyle ripped Brooks to his face and demanded he leave the interview huddle. Larry played it cool, having experienced this kind of heat from Torts. Cyrgalis wasn’t there. He’s covering the Isles in Tampa but issued a tweet when he heard Boyle also attacked him personally. Said Cyrgalis about Boyle: “I did my job. Not sure he ever did his.”

Huge crowds at Bernie’s near-daily outdoor rallies inside New York City parks over the last week created compelling optics that suggested his campaign was ready to spring a big Empire State upset.

Instead, Senator Sanders got hit with a knockout punch to the gut from Hillary and a loyal New York state Democratic Party establishment which quietly delivered a 16-point victory.

Bernie spent much of the last three weeks in New York City but got totally creamed in all five boroughs. Sanders got rock star receptions from energetic young supporters who stood in line for hours to see his standard stump yet he lost NYC by an amazing 25 points.

How do you reconcile all the commotion and excitement about Bernie in the form of unmistakably loud and very public displays of support with his lousy showing at the polls?

The red flag for me came in the days leading up to primary election day (yesterday). Bernie and his campaign joined a chorus of supporters on social media in groaning about New York state’s primary election process. One must be a registered member of a party to participate in one’s party primary election – and there’s no fluidity or flexibility to accessing the process unless you have some recorded history with the party.

So, in this contest, if you were registered as anything but a Democrat (including the stated preference of “I do not wish to enroll in a party”), you couldn’t vote for either Hillary or Bernie or any of their aligned delegates unless you changed your party affiliation to “Democratic” in the prior calendar year. The only other way in was if you were completely unregistered prior to all of this – and registered fresh as “Democratic” by March 30, 2016.

That’s the way it is and that’s the way it’s been here for a long time. If you consider yourself a member of one of this country’s two major parties, and you want to be politically active within that framework, that’s how it works.

If you want to go off the reservation – and join the Greens – or in this state – the Working Families party – that’s totally cool. But if you do that, you sit out Bernie vs. Hillary – and you wait to make your hay in the general (when it’s too late). Unfortunately, I think a lot of the loud Bernie backers couldn’t tangibly help him to victory given their very noble efforts to fight the system via third party options. They finally got their guy – yet they couldn’t vote for him.

They didn’t see him coming a year ago and they couldn’t do anything about it other than go to his rallies once they did.

This is all anecdotal – of course. I haven’t seen hard research examining this. The polls had Hillary up 12 state-wide and she ran it up into blowout territory.

In her primary run against Andy Cuomo just two years ago, longshot Zephyr Teachout outperformed what Bernie mustered in Manhattan Tuesday by a sizable percentage of the total Dem votes cast.

I don’t really see any injustice – or anything un-democratic with a lower case D about the closed primary. The parties want their own members advancing a nominee – not those outside their philosophical approach – however stale or shitty it may be.

Bernie chose to run as a Democrat knowing the process. He knew the establishment is tough to buckle. He knew his supporters faced rigid, unavoidable voting constraints. Set aside the obscene money Hillary is getting from unsavory check-writers, the Dem’s primary process here is not rigged.

I mean, I guess it IS titled very much in favor of the major party player in terms of advantages within the delegate scoring system. But Bernie and his people knew the rules going in and they shouldn’t act indignant about eligibility a couple days before the election.

As far as the reports that NYC Board of Elections failed to pull off their job on the big day, that’s not a surprise. It happens every election day here. It’s a brutally ineffective organization that has actually gotten a little better in the last cycle or two but has a long ways to go.

My voting experience at a charter school in the neighborhood was seamless. I was in and out in under five minutes.

I didn’t feel intense sensations or emotions as I often do when I vote because of Bernie’s badly blown gun votes – and resignation about Hillary’s inevitability. But going to the polling place is one task I never pass up given the grandeur of the one person, one vote concept.

As I’ve done now since casting my first Democratic Presidential Primary vote for the Rev. Jackson in 1984 (followed by Jackson again in ’88, Jerry Brown in ’92, Bill Bradley in 2000 and Dennis Kucinich in 2004), I will come back home and support the party’s nominee despite liking another guy better in each of the years cited.

No sour grapes about Bernie’s performance here. He livened up the conversation and pushed the party’s nominee leftward. Now, if only all those people who pushed so hard to feel the Bern can learn from the process and be ready to work more effectively within it when it rolls around again in four years.