L.A. Now Live: Latest on Dodgers-Giants rivalry, fatal stabbing

Join us at 9 a.m. when we talk with Times reporters Lee Romney and Kate Mather about this week’s slaying of a Dodgers fan in San Francisco after two groups of men began arguing about the Dodgers-Giants storied rivalry.

Authorities said 24-year-old Jonathan Denver was wearing Los Angeles Dodgers apparel at the time of Wednesday night’s attack, and was involved in an altercation with Giants fans. The rivalry between the two teams has routinely spilled off the field. At times it has carried a terrible price — as when Bryan Stow, a 42-year-old paramedic, was savagely beaten outside Dodger Stadium in 2011, targeted because he was wearing Giants clothing.

The Dodgers lost, 6-4, Wednesday night to the San Francisco Giants. Denver was there but left the game a little early. With his father, brother, his father’s girlfriend and another friend, he went to a bar a few blocks from the Giants’ AT&T Park.

Denver was walking along 3rd Street when he and the others encountered a group of people heading to a club, authorities said. One of the men in the other group may have been wearing a Giants cap, police said, and there was some jawing between the groups over the rivalry.

The encounter became physical. At first no one was seriously injured, then it erupted again a short time later. It ended when Denver realized that he had been stabbed. He died a short time later at San Francisco General Hospital.

Michael Montgomery, of Lodi, who was taken into custody shortly after the incident, will be charged in the slaying, San Francisco police said Thursday.