Tim Jamieson took the chance.
Following Tony Vitello’s freshman season at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, a former NAIA program that transitioned to Division II, his father, Greg, reached out to Jamieson.
Greg Vitello and Jamieson had known each other for quite some time by that point. The former was a legendary baseball and soccer coach in the St. Louis area. The latter was, at the time, Missouri’s baseball head coach and often crossed paths with Vitello.
The elder Vitello asked Jamieson if he could take a chance on Tony, who wanted to play at Missouri. Jamieson agreed to do so and add Tony, who recently referred to himself as a “scrub walk-on.” It was a decision that not only set the stage for Vitello’s introduction to coaching but his unprecedented leap from Tennessee’s head coach to the Giants’ new manager.
“What I discovered about him as a player is a lot of the same character values that he still has,” said Jamieson, who’s currently the pitching coach at Missouri. “That’s the competitiveness, tenacity, being a great teammate, being loyal, doing all the right things. He had qualities as a human being that you recognized, and I personally had a lot of value in those.”
“Someone has to kind of earn it a little bit, but I don’t know that I earned it all the way, but the belief factor helped me catapult me into believing I could be a coach,” Vitello told 247 Sports in 2024. “He gave me an opportunity as a player when nobody really should have, and then a coach when absolutely nobody should have.”
Vitello immediately transitioned from playing to coaching following three seasons as an infielder at Missouri from 2000-02, his first opportunity being the associate head coach for the Salinas Packers of the California Collegiate League. In 2003, Vitello joined Jamieson’s staff as a volunteer assistant. The following year, Jamieson had to fill an opening on his coaching staff when Sean McCann, the program’s pitching coach and recruiting coordinator, left for Kansas State.
Jamieson only interviewed two people for the vacancy. One candidate was an experienced Division II head coach. The other candidate was Vitello, who was only in his mid-20s and had a sparse résumé. Jamieson had his hesitations.
At the time, collegiate programs only had three full-time coaches. Was Jamieson comfortable having Vitello be responsible for half of the team? And what about Vitello being main recruiter? Despite those concerns, Jamieson knew Vitello was the right person because he was, in his estimation, the best person.
“There’s obviously going to be a learning curve and growing pains, but the positives way outweighed the negatives,” Jamieson said. “I’ve always tried to hire the best person. I didn’t really care what they coached. Tony was, by far, the best person.
“He shadowed me as I operated as the pitching coach the first year. Then, very shortly after, I turned it over to him. He’s high IQ. He’s such a good teacher and he earns the players’ trust because of that connection piece. As long as you’re saying the right things and players believe in you, that’s going to work.”
The Tigers experienced an extended run of success under Jamieson with Vitello as an assistant, making seven consecutive postseasons from 2003-09. In ‘06, Missouri came within one win of making the College World Series. That success was due in part to Vitello’s ability to recruit players who, to Jamieson, possessed more than just talent.
“Our teams in Missouri, you didn’t want to play us. You certainly didn’t want to play us late in the year because of the competitiveness and who we were as a team,” Jamieson said. “Tony does a really good job of identifying that in people. I don’t know if he had specific things he was looking for or just had a gut feel, but we very rarely missed on a player from a character standpoint. I think that’s what led to our success. We had our share of talent, but most of the talent that we had developed into talent, not recruited talent.”
Among those who Vitello worked with was future Hall of Famer Max Scherzer, whose freshman year coincided with Vitello’s first season as a full-time assistant.
Scherzer, a future Hall of Famer, was far from a finished product when he arrived in Columbia. As a freshman, Scherzer exerted so much effort in his delivery that his cap fell off when he whipped his head. Vitello worked with Scherzer to pitch with more balance and control, helping Scherzer win Big 12 Pitcher of the Year as a sophomore.
“They kind of grew up together in our program,” Jamieson said. “Max would go to the end of the world for Tony because of what Tony did for him as a coach, not necessarily developing him as a pitcher but developing him as a person. Max had things he had to clean up from the baseball side of things, but I think who he became as a person, he owes a lot of that to Tony.”
There weren’t many roles that Vitello didn’t fulfill during Missouri. Vitello did just about everything during his eight seasons with the program, whether it was working with pitchers to helping infielders and outfielders to being a first-base coach. Jamieson knew Vitello wanted to be head coach at some point, understanding that Vitello’s willingness to wear different hats would serve him well when it came time for him to run his own team.
Following eight seasons, Vitello left Missouri to work as an assistant at TCU from 2011-13, then at Arkansas from 2014-17 before landing his first head coaching job at Tennessee. After transforming the Vols into one of college baseball’s best programs, he’s making the unprecedented leap from college head coach to major-league manager.
“The best managers are the ones that have their players ready to play,” Jamieson said. “It’s all of those conversations and things that happen away from the field, in the clubhouse. Trust is developed through those relationships, and that’s what Tony’s great at. It may take him some time to get there — it always does to build trust — but once his players get to know who he is, I don’t think not having played professionally is going to matter.”