Spike Lee never needs much of an excuse to show up for a New York team.
The “Do the Right Thing” filmmaker remains the talk of the town after a Bronx scuffle Wednesday night.
After exchanging heated words with another man after the Yankees-Red Sox game, Lee has gone radio silent on social media.
Lee is an avid poster on Instagram but hasn’t shared a post on social media since Wednesday. His last post bragged about a great night at the game with his daughter, Satchel, but said nothing about what happened after.
He erupted at the stadium’s upscale Legends Suite dining area hours before the Yankees hosted Boston in Game 2 of their American League Wild Card Series.
Before the first pitch, the 69-year-old filmmaker was holding court over dinner.
The filmmaker walked in around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday night in a good mood, according to the New York Post.
He’d been in the Bronx Tuesday night, behind the Yankees’ dugout with his daughter, Satchel, as New York blanked Boston 9-0 in Game 1.
Satchel also accompanied Lee to Wednesday night’s game.
Fox Sports host Andy Slater, who posted the video, said people seated near Lee told him a fan had been filming the director while he ate. The man repeatedly asked how he felt about Palestine.
Then it went further. A bystander had reportedly asked Lee for a selfie told him to say “F— Palestine.”
Lee got up from the table and went to find security.
In the clip, staffers hold him back as he shouts, “Why’d you come over to me?”
A man in a blue sport jacket then points toward someone at a nearby table and says it twice. “You’ve gotta go. You’ve gotta go.”
Lee, for his part, stuck around. He was later photographed celebrating with actor Nick Turturro after the final out of a 9-2 rout that completed a two-game sweep of Boston and sent the Yankees to the American League Division Series.
On social media, few people asked why Lee lost his cool. They wanted to know why anyone thought that was a good idea.
“People just dont leave people alone. If he went out to eat, let him eat, geesh!” one person wrote under our Instagram post.
Others turned their attention to the diners at the table the staffer pointed toward. “Then act as if they are so confused and startled!” one user wrote. Another put it more plainly: “They threw the rock and now hiding their hand.”
One New Yorker reminded everyone whose city it is, writing that “Spike is one of the most legendary citizens of the city…the city will always choose Spike!”
And one person found the humor in it: “Trying to be cute and had to get a doggy bag.”
The request didn’t come out of nowhere. In February, Lee sat courtside at NBA All-Star Weekend at Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, wearing a keffiyeh-patterned sweater and carrying a bag decorated with Palestinian flag badges.
That same weekend, Portland Trail Blazers forward Deni Avdija became the first Israeli player ever chosen for an All-Star Game.
People accused Lee of targeting him, while one woman took to X, showing her leaving an Israeli flag at Lee’s New York home.
Lee answered on Instagram two days later. “The Clothes I Wore are Symbols of My Concern For The Palestinian Children and Civilians, And My Utmost Belief In Human Dignity For All Humankind,” he wrote on Instagram in February.
He added that the look was “not intended as a gesture of hostility to Jewish people” and said he hadn’t even known Avdija was the first Israeli-born All-Star.
Lee also knows what it looks like when a stranger crosses a line.
At Cannes last year, his longtime collaborator Denzel Washington went viral for snapping at a photographer who kept grabbing his arm on the red carpet. Lee opened the next day’s press conference by joking that he wasn’t there to apologize for anything this time.
And in February, Michael B. Jordan and Delroy Lindo had to keep their composure onstage at the BAFTAs after a racial slur rang out from the audience.
Lee has not publicly addressed Wednesday’s run-in. But for the longtime face of New York fandom, the message from the Legends Suite was clear. He came for the game, not to recite someone else’s script.
