A San Antonio couple said they were verbally harassed at a Yankees-Red Sox game in New York the day before viral videos showed Spurs fans being attacked after Monday night’s game. Chris and Susan said the encounter happened while they were wearing Yankees gear, not Spurs clothing, as they moved through the crowd at Yankee Stadium.
That timing is why the story has spread beyond one ballpark. Readers searching when is game 5 are also seeing how the mood around the Spurs’ trip to New York turned sour in public places across the city, not just outside the arena where the win drew the most attention. Susan, a native San Antonian who lived in New York for 14 years, said she and her husband had even packed Victor Wembanyama jerseys before leaving home, but stayed with their Yankees clothes after being warned not to wear Spurs gear.
Susan said the men she believed were Knicks fans were speaking in Spanish in a mocking tone and began circling them, chanting, “Knicks in 4, Knicks in 4.” She said the taunting came despite the fact that the couple were not wearing anything that referenced the Spurs. The account adds a separate, earlier flashpoint to the hostile scene that later played out around the team’s fans in New York.
The couple’s Monday night plans showed how quickly a normal trip turned into something else. They said they intended to go to a watch party in Bryant Park, but found the area already at capacity when they reached the entrance. Susan said they noticed “a dangerous element” of younger people looking for trouble near the park, then decided bars were too crowded and headed back to their hotel.
On the way, they saw a Spurs fan in a Tim Duncan jersey walking toward Bryant Park. Chris said, “oh my gosh, there comes this guy wearing this jersey,” and added that he felt sorry for him because he seemed headed into “a hornet’s nest.” Susan said she took a quick picture of him with her Meta glasses because she was proud of him. The next day, they said, they saw the same man in a social media video that was making the rounds online.
What connects the two episodes is not proof of a link between the men who taunted the couple and the later violence, which remains unanswered. It is the broader picture: Spurs fans in New York were being singled out in more than one place, on more than one day, and the warning to keep jerseys packed away was already part of the trip before the most widely shared attacks appeared online.
