What More Do You Want From Tony Vitello And Tennessee?
On the national response to Tony Vitello's Tennessee Baseball team going down in Knoxville vs. Notre Dame on Sunday.
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Harry Bosch is never going to change. The star of the Amazon Prime drama “Bosch” follows a LAPD detective with a strong love of jazz and chasing ghosts. He’s haunted from his past, but he understands that. He understands that part of what makes him such a gifted detective is who he is as a person. All the pieces, his rough childhood included, matter. He bends the rules, he keeps to himself, he maintains the ethos that “either everyone matters, or nobody matters” everyday.
He also gets results, which is why the department puts up with him. Harry Bosch is not for everybody, and he knows that. And yet, it doesn’t deter him from doing his job. He stays steadfast in who he is, which leads to some folks like his lieutenant who understand him and back and others, like the commissioner, who could not like him any less. Without the results, he is out of a job.
Tennessee baseball manager Tony Vitello reminds me of Bosch. His results are beginning to speak for themselves, both on the diamond and in recruiting, but he is not for everybody. When he revealed that he had learned that the Vols had a date with the Fighting Irish in the Super Regionals after a text from Peyton Manning, I’m certain some folks around the country rolled their eyes. When he chest-bumped an umpire in a game from the Alabama series, I’m certain folks around the country rolled their eyes. There may even be some Tennessee fans who were uneasy with the confident, brash, in-your-face style that the Volunteer baseball team played with this season. Those folks still rolled with it, though, because, the results spoke for themselves.
Vitello did just win Coach of the Year, after all.
It is not surprising that when Tennessee finally went down over the weekend in Knoxville against Notre Dame that a lot of folks danced on their graves. There was a clear disconnect between how Tennessee fans saw the team and most everybody else around the country. It was a moment that a lot of folks had hoped would happen. Even better for them, it happened before the Vols even made it to Omaha. “It couldn’t have happened to a better group of guys,” a lot folks said about a group of guys they knew nothing about.
Tennessee fans knew what they were up against as the No. 1 overall seed entering the tournament. Vitello was well aware of the fact that a No. 1 overall seed had not won the dang thing since ‘99 Miami. But that did not mean that Tennessee and Vitello needed to change who they were because of the road in front of them.
Tennessee lost exactly one series in the regular season, and it came against a bad Kentucky team in Lexington. (They did get their revenge in the SEC Tournament in Hoover, though.) Vitello and company knew the Vols were the best college baseball team in the country, but that never meant they would be able to essentially remain perfect into late June.
One series loss the whole regular season. That’s tough-sledding, especially in the SEC.
The Vols never trailed in the SEC Tournament. There was an Auburn loss here, and a Georgia loss there, but the Vols played nearly perfect, dominant baseball until one weekend they didn’t.
Immediately, the response was that Tennessee got a piece of “humble pie” in their loss to Notre Dame. Every other SEC team in the Super Regionals advanced. Tennessee did not. Of course, Tennessee did not lose to Notre Dame because of their attitude and style-of-play. The “Daddy” hats were not responsible for starter Chase Burns maybe staying in a batter or two too long. The bravado did not zap their ability to push guys around the bases when they got on all weekend.
Perhaps the most frustrating part of the “humble pie” crowd is that those same folks also subscribe to the “that’s baseball” idea. What happened in Tennessee over the weekend was as “that’s baseball” as it gets. One weekend, you just cannot knock in guys who are in scoring position. One weekend, your projected first-round starter can’t close up 0-2 in counts.
The conversation following Tennessee’s upset loss was that it was a referendum on Tennessee baseball, not that Tennessee had their first bad home weekend of baseball in the entire 2022 college baseball season.
Rocky Top Insider reported on how SEC Network’s Paul Finebaum characterized the Vols’ loss. He reportedly said on the airwaves this week on ‘The Paul Finebaum Show’, “Well, it happened on Rocky Top.” He continued, “Notre Dame came in there unheralded, the fourth-best team in the ACC, and beats not only the number one team in the tournament, but a team that many of the experts that you hear all the time, was possibly the best baseball team of all time. That ‘best baseball team of all time’ did not make it to the College World Series.”
Was 2021 Gonzaga not one of the best college basketball teams of all time because they came up just short in a 68-team tournament, or does the far larger body of work tell more of the story. Can Tennessee still be regarded as one of the best college baseball teams of all time, and also be a team that had a “that’s baseball” weekend at an inopportune time? Does it matter that the vast majority of folks who danced on Vitello’s rough loss fans of SEC teams who watched Tennessee run the SEC gauntlet both in the regular season and the SEC Tournament? It should, shouldn’t it?
He continued, “Tony V (Vitello) went a different direction.” Finebaum concluded, “Had he won, we all would’ve been saying that he’s unconventional, he’s brash, and he’s the best. He lost and he will pay for it. Listen, we don’t sugarcoat things here. He got his comeuppance [Sunday].”
Can folks not still be saying those things? Does one bad weekend outweigh what we all saw over the course of the 2022 college baseball season? Tony Vitello is still going to be unconventional, brash and one of the best managers in the sport. Why would he change after leading and building a Death Star of a college baseball team all season long? A loss on Sunday against Notre Dame should not overshadow two years of elite results on Rocky Top. Why should Vitello have to pay for being Vitello and dominating the sport for the majority of the year?
For a lot of folks, Vitello is going to remain in a lose-lose situation. If the Vols ran the gauntlet, folks would have still ripped him and this program for winning the wrong way. Because the Vols lost their first home series in the middle of June, folks ripped him and this program for previously winning the wrong way.
LeBron James underwent a similar struggle in Miami over a decade ago. Because of “The Decision” and his decision to build a Big 3 with the Heat, folks were going to have their takes and they were going to have their narratives. When LeBron and company lost to Dallas in the 2011 Finals, it was similar to Vitello’s Vols in that it was a piece “humble pie” for LeBron and company. It was no such thing, of course, and they made it back again and again during LeBron’s Miami run with a couple of titles to show for it. It didn’t matter, though, because some folks had their mind made up about that Miami team like some folks have their mind made up about Vitello’s team.
Tennessee brings back one of the best rotations in college baseball next season. The Vols are doing well in the transfer portal and in high-school recruiting and although a lot of familiar faces in the lineup will be gone, the ethos figures to remain on Rocky Top. The last two years for this program have been huge at Tennessee, and next year, Tennessee will likely not be the clear best team in the SEC, but they will be more like the 2021 team where they were one of the best.
That 2021 made it to Omaha. The 2022 team did not. That’s baseball, though, right?
With Vitello at the helm, Tennessee will continue to be in in the College World Series mix, and that’s all you can ask for as a fan, to be in the mix every year. Harry Bosch is Harry Bosch and Tony Vitello is Tony Vitello and they’re never going to change. If you’re a Tennessee fan or the LAPD, you can live with that because the results will come, even if sometimes they don’t come exactly when or how you want them to. They’re extremely good at what they do, and they do it their way, so you might as well let them be and trust the process.
Chase Thomas is the Sports Renaissance Man, Atlanta Sports Guy and Vol For Life. He is a graduate student at the University of Tennessee and resides in Knoxville, TN. Chase obtained his undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of North Georgia. He has written for a variety of publications that include Outsider, SB Nation, VICE Sports, SI’s The Cauldron, Cox Media Group & ESPN’s TrueHoop Network. You can email him at chasethomaspodcast[at]gmail.