ATLANTA — Crowds braved the cold on Friday to line up for the Braves Victory Parade as the World Series stars weaved through Atlanta and continued their route through Cobb County, making their way to The Battery.
It was a moment 26-years in the making, but some fans took issue with a short incident involving pitcher Tyler Matzek and police during the parade.
A Twitter video surfaced during the celebration showing what the poster claimed was Matzek almost being arrested in the midst of the parade. It would later be shared by multiple users and sports blogs.
The video shows Matzek on the street running between two floats. An officer grabs him by the arm as Matzek turns around. Matzek appears to be reaching into his pocket as the 5 second video ends.
As of Saturday afternoon, the video had more than 554,000 views on Twitter.
A second video shows a slightly longer version of the incident from a different angle. In that video, Matzek is seen walking backwards as the officer holds his jersey by the arm. The player and officer go off the frame of the video for several seconds. When the video catches up to them, three officers surround Matzek, and he appears to show them something, perhaps an ID. Two officers examine it and Matzek appears to be heading back to the float as the 28-second video ends.
That video had nearly 500,000 views as of Saturday afternoon.
Both video captions claimed police tried to arrest Matzek.
After seeing the first video, 11Alive reached out to Marietta Police. Police described it as a misunderstanding. Their explanation was that players were told not to exit the bus they were traveling on, and when Matzek did, an officer escorted him back to the vehicle.
According to Marietta Police, this happened with several other players at different points during the parade.
Whatever happened, it didn't appear to spoil Matzek's big day; he was later seen at the Braves celebration at Truist Park with a big smile on his face.