“Maybe I’m naive, but I thought it was a bush league play,” he said.

Vizquel, San Francisco’s 11-time Gold Glove shortstop, agreed with Gibbons. Vizquel said he once tried to trick an opponent on a grounder, and the umpire told him he couldn’t do that.

“You can’t scream at him. Even if he does, you have to realize who’s talking to you,” Vizquel said.

Nothing in the Official Baseball Rules governs what players can say, although the possibility of future retaliation usually sets limits. The Yankees don’t face the Blue Jays again until July 16 in New York.

“In a lot of cases, it’s an unwritten rule that players respect each other and do what’s best for the game,” umpire supervisor Rich Garcia said.

Deception always has been a part of baseball. It even cost Atlanta a World Series title in 1991, when Lonnie Smith was faked out by Minnesota second baseman Chuck Knoblauch and shortstop Greg Gagne, and failed to score what would have been the go-ahead run on Terry Pendleton’s eighth-inning double. The Twins went on to win in extra innings, then took Game 7.

“That probably goes into a different category because players feel that it’s up to them to discern, whereas if you’re looking up at a popup, you can’t discern whose voice is whose,” said broadcaster Bob Costas, who wasn’t sure whether A-Rod’s mouth move was allowed. “There are certain things that apparently are OK and then there are some other things that by some self-defined code are not.”

In Game 6 of the 2004 AL championship series, A-Rod was cited for an on-field move that umpires said was against the rules. He slapped the ball from Boston pitcher Bronson Arroyo’s glove and was called out for interference. Boston’s Kevin Millar called it “unprofessional.”

This one was less clear.

“Sometimes it happens in the heat of the moment,” New York Mets third baseman David Wright said. “It’s not like pimpin’ a home run. You don’t stand there and watch them. Obviously, Alex Rodriguez has been around the game a long time. That play, it’s not as firm as the other unwritten rules.”

Even families were divided.

“I think it was bush league,” Frank Rafferty said in the upper deck at Shea Stadium. “He was trying to win the game, but he’d be screaming if someone did that to him.”

His 11-year-old son, Nick, brought his glove and wore a Mets hat.

“I thought it was pretty fun,” he said. “I never really thought about doing it myself.”

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