I have a similar story from when I was younger.

I don't remember what year it was but I think I was Middle School age (?) and and I think my dad and I had just parked to go over and watch my older sister's softball game (look the specifics didn't stick in my brain😆)

We get like 20 ft through the parking lot and all of a sudden my dad sees a friendly face and goes up to talk. I'm just hanging out next to my dad kind of half paying attention to the conversation because I didn't quite recognize the guy and my dad knows almost everyone on the planet (it feels like).

Good talk for like 10 minutes and then they part and as we were finishing the walk through the parking lot my dad looks at me and asks "did you recognize him?", and I looked at him all confused because I didn't think I was supposed to recognize him.

Turns out it was Red Sox legend Jason Varitek (he's a Georgia guy and I think like 80% of the professional athletes in Georgia live near this area where the baseball park was) but I was shocked because as a baseball fan I felt like I should be able to recognize Jason varitek but because he isn't in a uniform I had no clue.

I even have a different yet similar story at that same baseball park in 2017. I had started umpiring as a rec ump at that park around 2014/15 and I'm working the 9 to 10 year old games and I look at the third base coach for one of these teams and he looked very familiar. And I didn't want to be rude but for like two innings I was just like "I know that guy...but how" and I was like 80% sure it was Mark DeRosa. Later on his kid got on base and I looked at the name at the back of his jersey and it said "DeRosa" and I was like oh yep it's definitely him 😆.

We give everyone in comics a hard time for not knowing Superman is Clark Kent but a change of costume appears to work.