KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Jazz Chisholm Jr. leaned over in the batter’s box and whispered into catcher Salvador Perez’s ear over the deafening boos.
If you thought it might be a thank you to Perez for not taking a shot at Chisholm when he had the chance to over the Yankees star’s claim that the Royals got “lucky” to win the last game in a back-and-forth playoff series, think again.
“I told him I love this s–t,” Chisholm said Wednesday night after he was villainized by angry Royals fans. “That’s exactly what I told Salvy.”
Chisholm was booed loudest in pregame introductions — and he ran out to greet his teammates down the third-base line telling them that he loved it, too — and again every time that he came to the plate in Game 3 of the ALDS, but he was all smiles after the Yankees prevailed with a 3-2 win to take command of the series.
“It gets my juices flowing, it gets me going,” said Chisholm, who went 0-for-4 but played a clean third base. “I’m hearing the loud noises and everything is going in my head. I’ve never seen anybody boo a bum.”
Teammates and manager Aaron Boone weren’t worried about the effect the reception would have.
“That’s good for the playoffs to have a little bit of that,” Boone said. “I don’t think he meant any disrespect by it at all. It made for a little better environment.”
Chisholm started the fire after the Yankees had nothing to show for a bunch of hard-hit at’em balls in a Game 2 loss.
“We had a lot of opportunities tonight,” Chisholm said Monday. “They just got lucky.”
Boone subsequently tried to get Chisholm off the hook by saying the line of questioning led him to words that were misconstrued.
But the gregarious trade-deadline acquisition wasn’t looking for any saving from the reaction that he was expecting at Kauffman Stadium.
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“That’s the reaction I wanted,” Chisholm said. “I’m glad that we got it. It got the team going.”
Chisholm said playing the role of troll is “for me.”
“If I wasn’t a player that they cared about or anything, they wouldn’t be out there booing. They would just let me go do my thing,” Chisholm said. “Obviously, I got to a lot of people, right?”
It’s a near-guarantee that the booing will get louder Thursday when the Yankees can clinch the series. It might be hard for anyone to outdo the moment that made Chisholm laugh the most.
“There was like this 27-year-old man and I think he was mimicking the girl on the side of him,” Chisholm said, before switching into a shrill voice. “He was like, ‘You’re 0-for-3.’ But he looked like a big man, so when he did it, I almost cried. It was funny.”
