We’ve all been stuck at that table.
You’re out for a drink, trying to enjoy the night, but there’s that one guy. He’s staring into the middle distance, nursing a lukewarm beer, and talking about the one who got away.
He talks about the timing. He talks about the miscommunications. He talks about how, if just one thing had gone differently, the universe would be in alignment. Things would be different. Things would be better.
Usually, you just nod, wince, and hope he picks up the tab.
But rarely does that guy take on the same mood and tone while wearing a Major League Baseball uniform, sitting in a dugout, while ostensibly being there to discuss his current job managing the San Francisco Giants.
On Monday, Giants first-year manager Tony Vitello turned a standard spring-training media availability into a “therapy” session. (His word, not mine.)
It was unprompted, unfiltered, and, quite frankly, bizarre.
Vitello kicked things off with a question no one actually asked: When did you first think I was taking this job?
It’s a question that implies a level of espionage, not the hiring of a baseball manager in the offseason. But for the next 20-or-so minutes, with some breaks to discuss bullpen arms and Jung Hoo Lee, Vitello broke down the timeline of his hiring as if it were re-creating a John Cusack movie.
And then, right in the middle of this forlorn monologue, he dropped a quote that should have every Giants fan doing some deep questioning of their own:
“Somebody tweeted it out,” Vitello said, referring to the news that the Giants were targeting (not hiring) him. “I don’t know who told them. I wish I did. It might’ve changed the course of history if I would’ve known who did, to be honest with you.”
He kept going.
“At that point, nothing was going to happen. But somebody decided that it was going to happen. Then, the whole world started spinning real quick.”
Wait, what?
My interpretation: This isn’t a guy saying, “It was a tough decision to leave Tennessee.” Of course it was. He was a god in Knoxville. He built a monster of a program. He was the best in the game in college baseball.
No, this is a guy effectively saying, “I got goaded into this job.”
This is a guy implying that if he could find the Twitter snitch who broke the news (which he says he didn’t read), he might still be wearing Volunteer Orange.
“Nothing was going to happen.” Until it did. Because, I guess, the internet said so.
And that begs the very loud, very uncomfortable question that nobody in the Giants’ front office wants to hear right now:
Does Tony Vitello actually want to be here?
Look, nobody can blame Vitello for missing the college game and reportedly talking about it in every media session this spring. That’s his entire frame of reference.
And it’s not like he left that behind to take over a World Series contender in San Francisco.
But forgive me if Monday’s sermon didn’t come across like a man ready to tackle the NL West. It sounded like someone with some significant second thoughts he’s been trying to bury but had to get off his chest.
And while I appreciate Vitello’s forthrightness, when you let it all out in front of cameras and microphones, you aren’t doing yourself any favor with the fan base that is, on the whole, skeptical of the outsider.
You know that everyone is going to see this, right? You’re forcing me to write columns, wondering if this bold experiment has failed before the first pitch of the Cactus League season is even thrown.
I don’t know Vitello yet. I only know of him. And I wanted to give him a long, long leash because the people I know who do know him swear he’s great. This is also, unquestionably a big transition.
But after listening to his presser — the whole thing, not a single snippet — a few times now, the circumstances of Monday were weird at best and alarming at worst.
Vitello is no dummy. He eventually tried to pivot, claiming, “It’s probably time, after today, to divide the line in the sand…You know you can, you can love [your past] equally to your current place as well.”
So perhaps this was the final catharsis — a last look back towards the impressive footprints he left behindhim.
It better be.
But regardless, the damage is done. He just set himself up by publicly bemoaning “what if?”
How can he, I, or anyone counter the question that is going to inevitably come this spring: If Vitello is down this bad in the low-stakes breeziness of a cloudy February in Scottsdale, what happens when the real pressure cooker of a big-league season heats up?
What happens in June when the Giants are six games back of the Dodgers and three back of a wild-card spot? What happens when the intractable pull toward .500 baseball that has cursed the Giants grabs hold of the team once again?
Will we be back at the table, wondering where it all went so wrong?
I can appreciate leaving your heart somewhere special. They play a Tony Bennett song about that phenomenon after every Giants home game.
And one has to presume Vitello’s heart is still in Knoxville.
But his head needs to be with San Francisco.
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