Tony Vitello explains why he’s so honest with the media
San Francisco Giants manager Tony Vitello doesn’t speak in clichés. He’s also not entirely sure why. Asked recently by Chris Rose why he speaks so openly with reporters rather than defaulting to the kind of clichés that define most dugout press conferences, Vitello traced it back to his days as a college recruiting coordinator —…
Credit: Matt Kartozian-Imagn Images San Francisco Giants manager Tony Vitello doesn’t speak in clichés. He’s also not entirely sure why. Asked recently by Chris Rose why he speaks so openly with reporters rather than defaulting to the kind of clichés that define most dugout press conferences, Vitello traced it back to his days as a college recruiting coordinator — and to his mother.
“When you’re a recruiting guy in college, you’re the liaison between scouts and the players, and the one thing we always try to do is talk to our players and say, hey, these scouts are just guys that have a job to do,” Vitello said. “Umpires, media, scouts, agents, those people, as far as their job — they all have a different job than I do that can probably only interfere with trying to win games — but they are people. My dad was intense as it gets, but my mom was pretty damn strict about the manners, so I think it’s just about respect for people’s time, and you’ve got to have something to write, and I’d rather just have a conversation.
” Tony Vitello says he’s more honest with the media because he understands reporters have a job to do and he doesn’t want to waste their time pic. twitter. com/A4nOPZy8Ez — Chris Rose Sports (@ChrisRoseSports) May 19, 2026 The philosophy has been on full display since Vitello arrived in San Francisco last October after eight seasons as Tennessee’s head baseball coach, though not always in the way he might have intended.
His first notable press conference as Giants manager involved him re-litigating the media reports around his own hiring, telling reporters the leak “might have changed the course of history” before walking it back the following day. Two games into the regular season, he blamed himself publicly for the Giants’ scoreless start, saying he got “all fire and brimstone” and left the locker room “a little emotional. ” During a Fox broadcast, he told Ken Rosenthal that the biggest adjustment from college to the majors was “I can’t talk down to guys anymore, they’re my age.