At THE moment of contact, you could hear almost all of Clint Frazier’s loyal constituents leap to their feet and lend their voices to the night. These are the moments they crow about most loudly, most passionately: the bat speed, the absurd ability to turn on fastballs, even one at eye-level, as this one was.

One second, Tampa ace Blake Snell figured he was simply firing something for Frazier to think about. The next he was watching a baseball soar like an asteroid into the second deck at Petco Park, over the auxiliary scoreboard, 418 feet away.

“With Snell, he’s a guy who likes to throw it up in the zone,” Frazier would say. “I went into the at-bat anticipating and had my sights set up there; but it’s not often you hit that pitch. That’s probably the first one of my career I’ve hit up there.”

Frazier would not be the lone Yankee to rise to the moment to help deliver this 9-3 victory over the Rays in Game 1 of this best-of-five American League Division Series. Aaron Judge and Kyle Higashioka also hit blasts that helped turn a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 lead in the fifth, and there was Giancarlo Stanton’s cherry-on-top grand slam in the ninth.

Gerrit Cole, shaky at times, was still a Game 1 horse, now 2-for-2 in those assignments. The Yankees bullpen? In what could be an intriguing and awfully busy week, two-thirds of the three-headed monster of Chad Green, Zack Britton and Aroldis Chapman foiled the Rays across the last three innings, finishing the job that Cole started, Chapman’s services deemed unnecessary once Stanton went deep and blew the game open.

But Frazier was the name on the tip everyone’s tongue as this series began, because he received but one at-bat in the two-game wild-card series with the Indians (he struck out in Game 2), because he is every bit as intriguing a talent as the Yankees have, capable of doing things that make you blink when you see them to make sure that you saw them.

He has waited for his turn, done so without much complaint, let the voices of his backers on Twitter and elsewhere do much of the campaigning for him. Those surrogates are at their loudest when Aaron Boone writes Brett Gardner’s name in the lineup in lieu of Frazier’s.

It is not meant to disrespect the eldest Yankee statesman, not really, but merely meant to reflect an enthusiasm for Frazier, who even this early in his career is the kind of player it’s awfully hard to take your eyes off of: the red hair, the No. 77 on his back, the way he can swing a baseball bat so fast it disappears in a blur.

“He’s answered the bell at every turn this year,” Boone said of Frazier, who struck out in his other turn at bat before the Rays removed Snell and Boone went with Gardner against the righties. “The focus, the work ethic, the professionalism he’s been able to show. He earned his at-bats when he got here and he’s a big reason why we’re in the postseason.”

Frazier was very good this year: eight homers, 26 RBIs, a .905 OPS in only 39 games and 131 at-bats. He spent some time at the alternate site, which had to eat at him, which certainly bothered his most vocal acolytes. He said nothing. When Stanton got healthy Frazier’s playing time diminished, as it almost always does. He said nothing.

There may come a time, may come a season, when that won’t be his M.O. any longer, when he will finally grow tired of playing the faithful soldier, when the reality that he would find plenty of at-bats for almost all of the other 29 teams in the sport will officially grow old.

For now he plays when he plays and sits when he hits and doesn’t let the uncertainty get to him.

“He gets his opportunity tonight and I’m really proud of how he’s handled things, and showed himself to be a real pro,” Boone said.

The Rays go with a hard-throwing right-hander Tuesday night, Tyler Glasnow, and that almost certainly means that Frazier will report to the ballpark in the afternoon and see Gardner’s name in the lineup, hitting eighth, and he’ll see his own name in the pile of reserves. He’ll likely have to savor this one for a bit.

“My first postseason hit of my career was a home run,” he marveled. “That’s special for me, and special for my team.”

He’ll wait his turn. If there’s one thing besides hitting baseballs that Clint Frazier has learned to do very, very well in his time in New York it is how to wait his turn.