MLB

Oakland’s antics irk Chavez

Eric Chavez stared into the visitor’s dugout from first base as each devastating dagger cleared the left field fence.

It was bad enough the A’s were delivering what Chavez, at that moment, assumed was a devastating Yankees loss. But after each of three 13th-inning homers that turned 5-5 to an 9-5 Oakland advantage, Chavez said, most of those on the A’s bench participated in what he described as “an orchestrated clapping, chanting” celebration that he had a great view of from first — a view that made him angrier and angrier with each long ball.

Chavez told The Post he considered the acts “high school-ish” and “pretty unprofessional.”

“I thought it was distasteful,” Chavez said. “That’s not cool. That’s not how you play the game. I am all for having fun, but that crossed the line. It is all about being humble.”

Chavez said he was not sure if any of his teammates saw a performance he termed “a little slap in the face” and wouldn’t suggest it served as a rallying point to spur the Yankees to their most stunning victory of the season. But he did acknowledge this as an example of how quickly and powerfully emotions and fates can turn at this time of year.

One moment you can be dancing and chanting and seemingly moving closer to a playoff berth and the next you can be skulking from the field, flabbergasted that somehow you have blown a four-run lead in the 13th inning and lost in the 14th on an error. It played into the extreme nature of games with playoff implications. Every pitch, every inning, every game feels so laced with tension and meaning. Every victory and defeat comes larded with magical — and magic number — significance.

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And when you spend 5 hours, 43 minutes and as many bullets as both teams did yesterday in what became Yankees 10, A’s 9, then it does — emotionally at least, and maybe physically in the bodies used for so long — feel like more than just one outcome.

“We knew the import of the game,” Joe Girardi said.

Indeed, the Orioles’ 9-6 win in 12 innings went on the board before the 13th in The Bronx. So each A’s homer — a two-run shot by Jonny Gomes and solo blasts by Yoenis Cespedes and Chris Carter — were sledgehammers destroying the Yankees’ small AL East edge. A loss would mean the Yankees would again fall into a first-place tie with Baltimore, putting them at some greater peril of missing the playoffs.

“Those weren’t little homers, those were no-doubt blasts,” Chavez said. “I thought it [the game] was over.”

Obviously, so did the celebrating A’s. The Yankees had been unable all game to capitalize on suspect Oakland defense, heading to the 13th at 2-for-19 with men on base, 1 for-12 with runners in scoring position. Plus, in their long history they had won after trailing by as many as four runs in extra innings once, but never this far into the game.

Yet, somehow, beyond the five-hour mark, with night coming and rain beginning to fall, the Yankees mustered the antithesis to their day.

They opened the 13th with three singles, a sac fly and a run-scoring wild pitch to close to 9-7. Raul Ibanez had not started, but had homered as a pinch-hitter in the fifth, his first homer since Aug. 5, a period of 70 at-bats in which he hit .129. And now he homered again, one of those no-doubters like Oakland had hit in the previous inning.

Now it was the Yankees dugout enlivened, sans the orchestrated chanting. In the 14th, the Yankees seemingly had the game won when Alex Rodriguez singled with one out. Melky Mesa, making his major league debut as a pinch runner for Chavez, should have scored easily from second. But he missed third and had to return to the bag. Had the Yanks failed to score Mesa would today be dealing with Buckner-esque implications. But the Buckner role fell to first baseman Brandon Moss, who flubbed an Eduardo Nunez grounder to bring home Ichiro Suzuki with the winner.

The Yankees had found the extreme euphoria associated with this time of year, won their longest game by time in more than a decade, held the AL East lead. It was their turn to dance, off the field, into the clubhouse. They had won a seventh straight when perhaps 20 minutes earlier the kind of extraordinarily painful defeat also associated with this time of year seemed certain.

Now that defeat belonged to the A’s, who are trying to secure their own playoff spot. Heads down they departed. Nothing to happily chant about any longer.