Bastard ball. It was filthy, savage, diabolical — and very nearly looted off the Blue Jays by some anonymous suits in New York. Suddenly that anti-Canadian conspiracy theory didn’t sound so cockamamie after all.

Just imagine the outrage, the cross-border diplomatic disaster, the egg foo yung all over the face of Major League Baseball, had not Jose Bautista taken the entire matter into his capable hands and launched a three-run game-winning rocket over the left-centre wall.

Canadians won’t be burning down the White House on Thursday, nor the MLB offices on Park Avenue.

A 6-3 triumph, courtesy of Jose-Jose-Jose and the biggest blast of his baseball life — contextually.

In the most haywire game of his baseball life.

“It was a lot of emotions, a lot of changing dynamics of the game, and the momentum from team to team,” he said.” Obviously in a do-or-die game, tensions are going to be running high. Ultimately we came out on top and that’s what we came here to do.’’

Mission accomplished — at least this part of it, the American League Division Series, off now to Kansas City and a once-again AL Championship Series tilt with the Royals, 7-2 victors last night over Houston.

But, sheesh, such brass. Invent a run — just snatch it out of thin air, masquerading as an error hung on catcher Russell Martin — to gift the visitors a 3-2 seventh-inning lead, enraging a sold-out crowd to the point of mass civil disturbance.

It so infuriated Toronto manager John Gibbons that he twice marched out of the dugout to argue the ump and uber-ump decisions. He still lost his brief in the Big Apple.

The Jays could have turtled right there, in righteous indignation and frustration, if they were that kind of team. But of course they are not.

They are, instead, winners — of the full-five-pack series, over the catastrophically collapsing Rangers, who couldn’t take the outrageous leg up they were handed by Major League Baseball officiating autocrats and run away with it. So twitchy perhaps over their ill-gotten gains that they racked up an astonishing trio of errors in the seventh inning, leading directly to Kevin Pillar knotting the score at 3-3.

And then Jose Bautista, who must have dreamt about just such a heroic moment all his live-long baseball days, took a 1-1 fastball on a line-drive cruise over the left-centre field fence.

He stood there and stared at it for a full moment, blowing out his cheeks, flaring his nostrils like a junkyard dog, and then flung his bat with machismo.

Toronto was up for good at 6-3, which is how this crazy drama ended, in the pandemonium of Rogers Centre.

VOTE!

Reliever Sam Dyson didn’t care for the way Bautista had tossed his wood, or the manner in which the Toronto clubhouse exploded in celebration, led by Toronto starter Marcus Stroman and his — gotta say it — macaroni and cheese hair. Dyson spewed his bile at Edwin Encarnacion, batting behind his hombre, which led to a bench-clearing moment.

Double-E had already taken his parrot out of its post-season gilded cage with a mammoth sixth-inning jack off Texas ace Cole Hamels, a monster crank that must have ridden an indoor jet-stream, banging above the second deck.

That was the 2-2 shot heard around the ballpark and the entire city, loudly hinting that Toronto’s bats were stirring to life.

An inning later, with Shin Soo-Choo at the dish and playoff nemesis Rougned Odor on third, Martin struck the extended arm of the batter whilst throwing the ball back to Aaron Sanchez, who’d come on in relief of best pal Stroman. The ball caromed towards third and home plate umpire Dale Scott had his arms up, signaling the play was dead.

Except it wasn’t, at least not once Scott got a good earful from Texas manager Jeff Banister. So Odor was granted home plate.

“When it first happened, I was waiting for him to say something,” a champagne-soaked Martin told reporters later. “He’d waved it off. I felt a moment of relief. Then the opposing manager comes out, pleads his case. I guess he could have been a lawyer because he said something to make (Scott) change his mind.

“Fortunately, it didn’t matter. Jose Bautista with the big knock. I wanted to hug him forever.’’

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By that juncture, Martin was on the bench, Dalton Pompey having pinch-run for him earlier. “I’m just a fan, waiting for something to happen. Then he comes through with one of the biggest homers I’ve ever seen. The whole friggin’ stadium erupted. I’ve never seen a stadium so alive, unbelievable.”

Amidst the popping corks, an equally drenched Gibbons admitted he was what-the-shoot — his favorite word, shoot — clueless during the protracted stall over the Odor maybe-maybe-not run scored. “I still don’t know exactly how it was ruled. Our thinking was, you hate for that to be the go-ahead run and possibly the deciding run. But the guys caught fire, we took advantage of a couple of mistakes, and then Bautista did what he’s done all year, the big blow.”

Gibbons’ strategy — calling upon the 24-year-old Stroman over stud starter David Price — was also vindicated, though the win would go to Sanchez, with a save to Roberto Osuna.

In the deluge of garbage that cascaded onto the field from a crowd hostile over the Odor run, a tall-boy whizzed right by the manager’s head. “I don’t know if they were pissed off with the situation or just me personally.”

Totally chuffed, was the skip, with his three young pitchers — 24-year-old Stroman to 22-year-old Sanchez to 20-year-old Osuna.

“The three young guns.”

An emotionally overwhelmed Sanchez afterwards talked about maintaining his cool, on the mound and mid at-bat with Choo, during the seventh inning madness. “A game like that, it’s pretty exhausting, mentally, physically, everything. You invest so much in it. It’s rewarding to be on the right side of the score.

“I had to stay under control. Choo was a big out. You don’t want to keep the inning going, especially after all that commotion — (it) felt like a half hour. Just take deep breaths.”

And then there was Bautista, standing atop a table in the clubhouse afterwards and leading the revelry.

Asked if he had any reaction to the bench-clearing, and Dyson’s apparent contention that Bautista flipping his bat with such gusto was bush — “backyard baseball” — the long-time clubhouse leader was terse. “No.”

He made it sound like a four-letter word, though.

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