Former MLB manager Joe Maddon explains why the Giants’ historic Tony Vitello hire is ‘insulting’
November 11, 2025
Hilariously bad take. š¬
47 comments
Itās telling he used Mandamiās supposed lack of qualifications as his prime example and not Trump.
> There was a rite of passage, a method to get to that point. So to think somebody can just do what you took 20-some years to be considered qualified to, it is kind of insulting.
Horrible mentality. They could recruit an 18-year-old straight out of high school for all I care as long as that person was good at managing a major league team.
I like how heās making it seem like Vitello didnāt pay his dues āfor 20 yearsā like he did coaching in the minors and the likeā¦except Vitello has been coaching since 2002, starting out as an assistant.
Whatever, heās just bitter nobody wants to hire his old ass anymore.
I hate unwritten “rules”
Catch-22. We should not have barriers to entry in the name of ātraditionā (the old āi walked both ways up hillā). On the other hand, there is definitely an argument for being seasoned. Itās an inherent risk on the giants part, but that doesnāt make it less valid.
Makes me want even more for Vitello to have great success. Maddon was a great manager, but heās had his chances. Why not think out of the box and give a good guy a chance?
Heās insulted he was passed over. You had your time and won a ring Joe. Take the W and move it along.
“It’s safe to assume neither Vitello nor the Giants care.”
shut up old fart
A far cry from the days when Maddon was considered innovative and cutting edge with his strategies that went against traditional baseball convention. There isnāt an infield shift drastic enough to cover for this awful take
Wasnāt Joe Maddon criticized for managing in the majors when he never played in the majors? Who made him the drawer of the line?
Iām old, and I have no problem saying this old stick in the mud needs to stfu with his āback in my day a guy had to blah blah blahā take.
oof madonn this guyās terrible
The irony is he used to be considered an “outside the box” type.
Buzz off old man
That settles it; Andrew Cuomo should be the Giants new manager
“Quite frankly, I’m using the word ‘insulting’ only from the perspective that you don’t have to have any kind of experience on a professional level to do this job anymore,” Maddon said. “Because when I was coming up, you had to have all that, you had to go through the minor leagues, you had to ride your buses. I was a scout, I started in 1981, I finally get a managerial job in 2006. There was a rite of passage, a method to get to that point. So to think somebody can just do what you took 20-some years to be considered qualified to, it is kind of insulting.”
Okay I can understand his frustration even if itās a horrible take.
“I guess the overarching point is, in today’s world, prerequisites to get jobs of this caliber, even jobs like the Mayor job of New York City now, it doesn’t require the years of experience that you may have had to have gone through in the past.ā
Okay gramps, because we all know your generation and years of experience has been wonderful in terms of improving the lively hood of future generations. If this hire pisses people like him off then Iām even happier with Tony getting hired.
Ok boomer lol
Joe madden is overrated. Almost blew a World Series with a stacked cubs team.
Yeah, fuck that guy. Acting like college coaching is an extracurricular activity. He wasn’t some kid just f’ing around, he’s been a professional coach that was coaching college. Not an amateur.
That’s great grandpa, let’s get you your evening medications and get you to bed.
Tell it to the commissioner. Wonder what he’s have to say about it? He’s never played Baseball and he’s the Commissioner?
Wouldnāt be shocked to hear that Maddon had lobbied the Giants FO for a managerial job interview and was turned down.
Eh itās just kinda a boomerish rant not to be taken seriously. Plenty of managers that never played in the big leagues or had hof careers as players have done well for themselves like Jim Leyland and earl weaver
Just to be clear, while I appreciate itās college, he was pretty successful. What makes this any worse than say, Kurt Suzuki?
The oldest current major leaguers were born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s. This old school mindset and the āunwritten rulesā that go with it have been extinct for decades now.
When someone gets mad that something was easier for someone else than it was for them it’s a sure sign that they’re at least partially a piece of shit.Ā
But pretty much everything I’ve seen from Maddon screams douchebag.
Not to mention he makes an idiotic point. The goal is to make the team better. Management would have to be stupid to think “paying dues” is more important than putting together the best team you can
Already makin the KNBR boomers mad, you love to see it
The idea that it’s an insulting hire merely because Maddon had to pay his dues for 25 years to get a manager job is indeed a hilariously bad take. But if you read through the whole thing, he’s more nuanced than that. It’s not as get-off-my-lawn” as the headline and first paragraph infer.
Joe Maddon is a whino that tries to hide behind an articulate vocabulary. He is nothing more than a hipster that will change to whatever movement is considered cool and edgy at the time but not quite mainstream. He’s the guy that tries very hard to be cool while pretending that he isn’t worried about other people’s opinions. If Vitello was a female or different ethnicity I guarantee you he’d be praising this hire from the mountain tops
Dumb take – not everyone takes the same path in life.
This is such a horrible take by Maddon. Why? Here’s a quick analogy:
I host a small little television show, done it for 25 years. It would be like me calling podcasters “insulting” because they didn’t come up through the traditional broadcast channels. Life changes. Things evolve. Dude needs to get over himself.
Joe Maddon can fuck off and keep on fucking off, and when he reaches the end of the world he can fuck off over that too.
Signed, a bitter native Guardians fan
Joe Maddon sucked as a manager. Who cares what he thinks.
someone tell Joe Maddon that they have buses in college too
Bitter take. I wonder if he felt like this with managers like Vogt who went straight from playing to managing? Whereās the coaching dues there? Every hire has an amount of risk. All it takes is one person to do something unknown or differently for the first time before others do it consistently. Time will tell if the Giants made the right decision. Iām ok with the out of the ānormalā hire.
He makes a decent point, but also youāre never going to get any new ideas if you just keep going with the status quo. Thereās definitely risk with Vitello but if it doesnāt work out, itās not the end of the world. You can always hire another old manager thatās been tossed around 20 teams later.
As long as he has runners on third take more than a 3 foot lead in the 7th game of the World Series Iām ok with the risk of hiring a college coach.
Go make a shirt about it, Joe.
Tell that to Jim Harbaugh.
F this guy.
Back in my day……
He just sounds like a pissy old man.
Iām a Tennessee fan, and idk if Iām allowed or yāall even want me to do this, but Iām sure by now yāall know the rundown. He took a program that had never achieved being elite, and made them elite year in, year out. He gets the most out of his players. He has a fiery disposition, and that rubs off on everyone around him. The League is clearly very different from college, and he will have to adapt. Hiring him was certainly a risk, ask hiring college coaches for professional teams always is. That being said, I truly think Vitello can and will get the job done. Yāall are my #2 MLB team now, and Iām excited to see what Vitello can do at this level.
Like I give a good goddamn about what Joe Madden has to say about anything.
47 comments
Itās telling he used Mandamiās supposed lack of qualifications as his prime example and not Trump.
> There was a rite of passage, a method to get to that point. So to think somebody can just do what you took 20-some years to be considered qualified to, it is kind of insulting.
Horrible mentality. They could recruit an 18-year-old straight out of high school for all I care as long as that person was good at managing a major league team.
I like how heās making it seem like Vitello didnāt pay his dues āfor 20 yearsā like he did coaching in the minors and the likeā¦except Vitello has been coaching since 2002, starting out as an assistant.
Whatever, heās just bitter nobody wants to hire his old ass anymore.
I hate unwritten “rules”
Catch-22. We should not have barriers to entry in the name of ātraditionā (the old āi walked both ways up hillā). On the other hand, there is definitely an argument for being seasoned. Itās an inherent risk on the giants part, but that doesnāt make it less valid.
Makes me want even more for Vitello to have great success. Maddon was a great manager, but heās had his chances. Why not think out of the box and give a good guy a chance?
Heās insulted he was passed over. You had your time and won a ring Joe. Take the W and move it along.
“It’s safe to assume neither Vitello nor the Giants care.”
shut up old fart
A far cry from the days when Maddon was considered innovative and cutting edge with his strategies that went against traditional baseball convention. There isnāt an infield shift drastic enough to cover for this awful take
Wasnāt Joe Maddon criticized for managing in the majors when he never played in the majors? Who made him the drawer of the line?
Iām old, and I have no problem saying this old stick in the mud needs to stfu with his āback in my day a guy had to blah blah blahā take.
oof madonn this guyās terrible
The irony is he used to be considered an “outside the box” type.
Buzz off old man
That settles it; Andrew Cuomo should be the Giants new manager
“Quite frankly, I’m using the word ‘insulting’ only from the perspective that you don’t have to have any kind of experience on a professional level to do this job anymore,” Maddon said. “Because when I was coming up, you had to have all that, you had to go through the minor leagues, you had to ride your buses. I was a scout, I started in 1981, I finally get a managerial job in 2006. There was a rite of passage, a method to get to that point. So to think somebody can just do what you took 20-some years to be considered qualified to, it is kind of insulting.”
Okay I can understand his frustration even if itās a horrible take.
“I guess the overarching point is, in today’s world, prerequisites to get jobs of this caliber, even jobs like the Mayor job of New York City now, it doesn’t require the years of experience that you may have had to have gone through in the past.ā
Okay gramps, because we all know your generation and years of experience has been wonderful in terms of improving the lively hood of future generations. If this hire pisses people like him off then Iām even happier with Tony getting hired.
Ok boomer lol
Joe madden is overrated. Almost blew a World Series with a stacked cubs team.
Yeah, fuck that guy. Acting like college coaching is an extracurricular activity. He wasn’t some kid just f’ing around, he’s been a professional coach that was coaching college. Not an amateur.
That’s great grandpa, let’s get you your evening medications and get you to bed.
Tell it to the commissioner. Wonder what he’s have to say about it? He’s never played Baseball and he’s the Commissioner?
Wouldnāt be shocked to hear that Maddon had lobbied the Giants FO for a managerial job interview and was turned down.
Eh itās just kinda a boomerish rant not to be taken seriously. Plenty of managers that never played in the big leagues or had hof careers as players have done well for themselves like Jim Leyland and earl weaver
Just to be clear, while I appreciate itās college, he was pretty successful. What makes this any worse than say, Kurt Suzuki?
The oldest current major leaguers were born in the 80s and grew up in the 90s. This old school mindset and the āunwritten rulesā that go with it have been extinct for decades now.
When someone gets mad that something was easier for someone else than it was for them it’s a sure sign that they’re at least partially a piece of shit.Ā
But pretty much everything I’ve seen from Maddon screams douchebag.
Not to mention he makes an idiotic point. The goal is to make the team better. Management would have to be stupid to think “paying dues” is more important than putting together the best team you can
Already makin the KNBR boomers mad, you love to see it
The idea that it’s an insulting hire merely because Maddon had to pay his dues for 25 years to get a manager job is indeed a hilariously bad take. But if you read through the whole thing, he’s more nuanced than that. It’s not as get-off-my-lawn” as the headline and first paragraph infer.
Joe Maddon is a whino that tries to hide behind an articulate vocabulary. He is nothing more than a hipster that will change to whatever movement is considered cool and edgy at the time but not quite mainstream. He’s the guy that tries very hard to be cool while pretending that he isn’t worried about other people’s opinions. If Vitello was a female or different ethnicity I guarantee you he’d be praising this hire from the mountain tops
Dumb take – not everyone takes the same path in life.
This is such a horrible take by Maddon. Why? Here’s a quick analogy:
I host a small little television show, done it for 25 years. It would be like me calling podcasters “insulting” because they didn’t come up through the traditional broadcast channels. Life changes. Things evolve. Dude needs to get over himself.
Joe Maddon can fuck off and keep on fucking off, and when he reaches the end of the world he can fuck off over that too.
Signed, a bitter native Guardians fan
Joe Maddon sucked as a manager. Who cares what he thinks.
someone tell Joe Maddon that they have buses in college too
Bitter take. I wonder if he felt like this with managers like Vogt who went straight from playing to managing? Whereās the coaching dues there? Every hire has an amount of risk. All it takes is one person to do something unknown or differently for the first time before others do it consistently. Time will tell if the Giants made the right decision. Iām ok with the out of the ānormalā hire.
He makes a decent point, but also youāre never going to get any new ideas if you just keep going with the status quo. Thereās definitely risk with Vitello but if it doesnāt work out, itās not the end of the world. You can always hire another old manager thatās been tossed around 20 teams later.
As long as he has runners on third take more than a 3 foot lead in the 7th game of the World Series Iām ok with the risk of hiring a college coach.
Go make a shirt about it, Joe.
Tell that to Jim Harbaugh.
F this guy.
Back in my day……
He just sounds like a pissy old man.
Iām a Tennessee fan, and idk if Iām allowed or yāall even want me to do this, but Iām sure by now yāall know the rundown. He took a program that had never achieved being elite, and made them elite year in, year out. He gets the most out of his players. He has a fiery disposition, and that rubs off on everyone around him. The League is clearly very different from college, and he will have to adapt. Hiring him was certainly a risk, ask hiring college coaches for professional teams always is. That being said, I truly think Vitello can and will get the job done. Yāall are my #2 MLB team now, and Iām excited to see what Vitello can do at this level.
Like I give a good goddamn about what Joe Madden has to say about anything.