First it was rumored with all parties obliquely denying it, and then it happened: the Giants have hired Tony Vitello from the University of Tennessee to be their next manager. This sort of thing has never happened before — a college coach with no MLB-affiliated coaching experience moving straight to a managerial position, or so the various “news” outlets keep indicating.
The question today is simple: how well do you think this is going to work out for Vitello and the Giants? The downsides are perhaps more easily perceived: managing a mixed clubhouse of young, relatively low-clubhouse players and their multimillionaire veteran counterparts is a different challenge than managing a bunch of college-age kids. There’s no Rafael Devers at Tennessee or elsewhere; even if a college kid has a Deve