How’d Yankees do it? Jazz Chisholm credits fans who ran onto field for saving season

NEW YORK — After taking a post-game shower, Jazz Chisholm returned to his locker and chatted on the phone with a friend. The two certainly had a lot to talk about.

“What a day,” Chisholm said as NJ Advance Media stood nearby after a Yankees playoff game for the ages.

Down 2-0 in a best-of-five AL Division Series, the Yankees trailed the Blue Jays 6-1 at the start of the third inning Tuesday night at Yankee Stadium.

Lose Game 3 and the season’s over.

By the fourth inning, the game was tied 6-6. That’s when Aaron Judge was thrown a pitch from Blue Jays reliever Louis Varland, an 0-2,100-mph fastball that was a foot inside. No matter, Judge somehow blasted a three-run homer.

Nobody knew if the towering flyball to left field would be a home run or a foul ball until it banged high off the foul pole. Judge stood at home plate, rooting it on like a 1975 Carlton Fisk, minus the hand waving.

“I thought it was really going to go over the foul pole and they were going to make the wrong call,” said Chisholm, the Yankees’ second baseman.

The next inning, the Yankees had the lead when Chisholm homered off Varland to make it 7-6, and at that point, the Blue Jays looked rattled.

The Yankees won 9-6 to force a Game 4 on Wednesday night. Win again and they’ll head back to Toronto to try exorcising their Rogers Centre demons in a Game 5 on Friday.

“You know why we won?” Chisholm asked during his one-on-one chat. “You know what inspired us?”

Judge?

“Yeah … and those fans who streaked onto the field,” Chisholm said.

Thinking Chisholm was kidding, NJ Advance Media asked, “You didn’t really want that to happen, right?

“Who doesn’t?” Chisholm shot back. “I love it when that happens!”

With the Yankees trailing 6-3 and the Blue Jays batting in the fourth, two young men jumped from the outfield stands onto the playing field just as Vladimir Guerrero Jr. stepped into the batter’s box with two outs and nobody on.

One was tackled quickly in center field, then the other sped from left field all the way into the infield with security chasing. The fan looked like he was headed to Guerrero until he spotted a guard coming right at him. Near the pitcher’s mound, he turned toward third base before slowing up and getting tackled from behind.

“I heard fans cheering, then I looked behind me and one of them was right there,” Yankees left fielder Cody Bellinger said. “I was like, ‘Damn!’ I didn’t know what was going on.”

Both fans were led away in handcuffs.

“I might have to go pay their fines and tell them to do the same thing (Wednesday),” Chisholm said with a smile. “I think they changed the whole momentum. The next inning, Judge homers and ties the game. The next inning, I homer.”

Judge smiled in disbelief in hearing Chisholm actually condoned fans running onto the playing field to interrupt play.

“That’s a first,” the captain said.

Bellinger’s reaction was shock.

“Oh God,” he said. “Oh no!”

Oh yes.

“Wow,” Yankees pitcher Clarke Schmidt added. “That’s a crazy thing to say. I don’t know why he would say that and encourage more of them, but Jazz finds wild things to say.”

Always.

Chisholm doubled down on his odd take during a group interview that included several TV cameras rolling.

There, he was asked to describe the momentum swing, “I think it might have been the streakers, the guys that came in. They got in (the Blue Jays’) heads a little bit. It’s all fun.”

Later, Chisholm chatted a little more with NJ Advance Media, who asked if that’s something he would have done as a youngster attending a Yankees game.

“Hell, no,” he said. “My grandma would have beat my butt! But I liked it tonight. It helped us. Whatever works. That’s what I’m saying.”

And if it happens again in Game 4 …

“If you see those guys, you know Jazz had a hand in it!” Yankees third baseman Ryan McMahon said.

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