Tony Vitello was the victim of one of the softest ejections ever, seemingly confirming what’s been said about how umpires feel about him
Former Tennessee Vols coach Tony Vitello is clearly being treated differently by MLB umpires this season.
Tennessee fans know that former Vols coach Tony Vitello is no stranger to being ejected.
Vitello, who is in his first season as the manager of the San Francisco Giants, was ejected plenty of times at Tennessee, and he’s already had a few ejections during his first season in MLB.
Some of them have been very much deserved and others have been the result of an umpire having a quick trigger finger.
The ejection that Vitello experienced on Friday night in the Giants’ 10-6 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks definitely falls in the quick trigger finger category. In fact, it was one of the softest ejections I’ve ever seen.
Vitello was ejected for simply yelling from the dugout that a foul ball that was called fair was “foul by that much.”
I mean, what are we doing here? I’ve seen managers chirp umpires all night and not get ejected. Vitello was just standing up for his pitcher — former Tennessee RHP Blade Tidwell was on the mound for the Giants — because an umpire made a bad call.
Here’s the play, which definitely looks like a foul ball (because the play was in front of the third base umpire, it wasn’t reviewable).
Tony Vitello is being treated differently by umpires
After the game, Vitello told reporters that home plate umpire Alan Porter told him he was ejected because he didn’t come onto the field to argue the call (Vitello, to his credit, said he wasn’t trying to make about himself by making a scene on the field over a non-reviewable call).
That’s the silliest reason to eject a manager.
It was suggested earlier this summer by Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow that umpires are “bullying” Vitello because he came from college without having previous big league experience.
“The umpires, I mean, even more so than players, pay their dues,” said Krukow on KNBR’s Murph & Markus in July. “They’re in the minor leagues for a long time. That entire group, when they finally get to the big leagues, they have a mental toughness because they did what it took to get to the big leagues, and the road to the big leagues is normally twice as long for an umpire as it is for a player. And I do think that they’ve held that against Tony Vitello, 100 percent, and I think they bully him, and I think that he needs to rise above it and get back in their face.”
In May, it was reported that an umpire crew threw jabs at Vitello and pitching coach Frank Anderson (who was with Vitello at Tennessee) about their “rah-rah and pom-pom” behavior.
Umpires may not like Vitello’s path to the big leagues, but they need to treat him like any other manager in MLB.
