World Series-winning manager Joe Maddon weighed in on the San Francisco Giants’ hire of Tony Vitello, who had no professional experience, saying that such a move is ‘insulting’ to those who have spent their entire careers paying their dues.
‘Quite frankly, I’m using the word insulting only from the perspective that it appears as though you don’t have to have any kind of experience on a professional level to do this job anymore,’ Maddon told KNBR in San Francisco.
‘When I was coming up, you had to have all that. You had to, like, go through the minor leagues. You had to ride buses. I was a scout. I started in 1981. I finally get a managerial job in 2006. I mean, there was a rite of passage, a method to get to that point.
‘So to think that somebody could just jump in there and do it, you took 20-some years to be considered qualified to do, it is kind of insulting.’
Maddon managed Tampa Bay from 2006-2014, the Chicago Cubs from 2015-2019 and the Los Angeles Angels from 2020-2022, winning a championship in 2016.
Now 71 years old, Maddon acknowledged that he wasn’t familiar with Vitello – who the Giants plucked straight from the University of Tennessee – but has been impressed with what he’s seen.
‘Having said that, I wish (Vitello) nothing but the best,’ Maddon said. ‘Because I watch videos of the guy, and I could actually understand why it’s perceived that he’s ready to do something like this.’