Tony Vitello had a classic reaction to his viral argument with an MLB umpire that will feel familiar to Tennessee Vols fans
Former Tennessee Vols baseball coach Tony Vitello, who is in his first season as the manager of the San Francisco Giants, went viral this week for a brief argument with an MLB umpire.
Former Tennessee Vols baseball coach Tony Vitello, who is in his first season as the manager of the San Francisco Giants, went viral this past week for arguing with an MLB umpire.
Vitello had a disagreement with umpire Junior Valentine — who oddly enough is an East Tennessee native who attended Maryville College — during the Giants’ 3-0 win against the Cincinnati Reds last Thursday.
Valentine, as you can see in the clip below, was pretty heated with Vitello in between innings.
After the game, Vitello was asked about the interaction with Valentine.
The former Tennessee head coach hilariously described Valentine’s demeanor during that interaction as “cordial”.
“No, he was over on our side and so thought I’d take the opportunity to just ask him about that play in particular,” said Vitello when asked if he took issue with something Valentine did during the game. “And like I said, he did everything he needed to do in that particular situation. What I don’t want to do is have that happen again in the same situation. We watched the whole play. Obviously, our replay guy’s got the vantage point that’s a little bit better in that situation.
“So just a conversation of asking him [about the play], and he was nothing but cordial, I guess, as crazy as that sounds.”
That’s classic Tony V. The dry sense of humor and underselling a tense moment is something we saw a lot from Vitello during his time at Tennessee.
By the way, part of the reason Vitello was upset was because Reds starting pitcher Chase Burns, who played for Vitello at Tennessee for two seasons before transferring to Wake Forest, came set quickly a couple of times, which led to some shouting from the Giants’ dugout.