When you’re done with Knicks and Rangers, the Yankees’ Soto/Judge (and Stanton!) show will be there for you

After the 3-1 pitch in the second inning from Spencer Arrighetti, the poor 24-year-old soul pitching for the Houston Astros on Wednesday night, Juan Soto stepped out of the batter's box.

He popped one shoulder forward, then the other, as if he were a peacock in a bodybuilding competition. He stepped back in. The bases were loaded, two outs.

Strike two arrived. Soto practically jumped backward, for reasons known only to him. He took his timeout. He inhaled deeply, allowing the crowd time to build a big cheer.

Then he chopped a ball to the right side of the infield, dashed down the line, and arrived at the base a millisecond ahead of Arrighetti. He made the call for the umpire: Safe! You can imagine what the crowd sounded like then.

“It's a show,” manager Aaron Boone said of watching Soto play. “You can feel the energy of the crowd. When he goes up there, and he takes ball one, it’s, ‘Ooh, strike one. 1-2 now. How’s the at-bat going to unfold?’ Literally every pitch, it’s theater.”

New Yorkers can be excused for fixating these days on the goings on at The Garden. Even the press box at Yankee Stadium was emptier than usual on Wednesday night; many of your favorite columnists and sidebar guys were, presumably, focused on the Knicks or told that there just wasn’t enough space for baseball in their papers tonight. Others will be on the Rangers on Thursday.

But when summer arrives and you’re done with Jalen Bruson and Igor Shesterkin, you can turn to the Bronx. Soto, Aaron Judge and -- can it be? -- Giancarlo Stanton will be waiting for you with leading roles in the swaggiest, most powerful show the Yankees have staged in years.

On Wednesday, Soto’s run scoring hit was hardly even his most captivating moment in the Yankees’ 9-4 win over Houston, the team’s fifth in a row and sixth consecutive victory this season against their longtime daddies.

Remember when the Astros were a brick wall that the Yankees could neither bust through nor summit? When every regular season felt like a march toward an October spanking in Texas? That was before Soto came to town.

By the time he legged out that infield hit in the third, he had already banged a ball off the back of the visitors' bullpen, a 440-foot blast of authority with no outs in the first and Anthony Volpe on first.

Judge led off the third by homering on a center-cut fastball -- the type of pitch he has been murdering for years, and has been fouling back for much of the early going this season.

“There’s days where he’s really locked in, and he’s in the zone forever, and on time,” Boone said. “He’s getting to that point where we’re seeing that a lot more consistently.”

Then Stanton, weirdo that he is (Boone’s word, not ours), sent a ball flying so fast and so far past the left field foul pole that his teammates on the bench became gaping, yelping little kids.

He played it characteristically cool, dropping the bat and scowling and watched it shoot past the field, over two walls, and into the seats.

The ball landed in the second deck, 447 feet from home plate, and at 119.9 miles per hour was the hardest-hit ball in all of Major League Baseball this year. People don’t often hit baseballs at 120 mph.

“G being weird again,” Boone said.

Boy was the place buzzing then, professional ballplayers and fans alike.

On the concourse during Soto’s fourth-inning at-bat, folks stopped behind every section behind home plate, standing still and making sure not to miss a single pitch -- or the shuffling, strutting, nodding and breathing that happens in between. As Soto walked to the plate, the Yankees screened a video of him on a pair of adjacent scoreboards, and the people waited to see what would happen next.

So did Judge, a fan standing in the on-deck circle.

“[I’m] watching what they’re throwing to him because they’ve gotta throw him every single pitch to try to get him out,” Judge said. “I definitely enjoy having a front row seat right there, watching him do his thing.”

Soto did not come through that time, but Judge followed and banged a double. He finished the game with three extra-base hits, two doubles and the home run.

Judge is getting hot. So is the weather. So is the energy at the stadium. Imagine what it could yet grow into when the town is fully ready to notice.