Tony Bytelo, the new San Francisco Giants coach, confessed his behind-the-scenes story at the time of the appointment of the coach.
On the 3rd local time, Bytelo confessed what happened when he was appointed as San Francisco coach during an appearance on the podcast program “Bushing with the Boys” hosted by former football players Will Compton and Taylor Lewan.
Bytelo, who has become the best leader in college baseball with 341 wins and 131 losses since he took over as manager of the University of Tennessee in 2018, has been appointed as the new manager of San Francisco. For the first time in Major League history, he went straight from being a college manager to a major league manager.
사진 확대 Tony Bytello, the new San Francisco director. Photo = AP= Courtesy of Yonhap News
According to him, the turnover process was not very smooth. News of Vaitello’s appointment was first reported by local media on October 18 local time.
When the news came out, he said he was leading a practice game for the University of Tennessee team he was leading, adding, “The first time this news came out was very unusual. And this is what we live in today’s era,” he said, recalling the time.
At that time, it wasn’t even the time to make a decision. I was playing a practice game on Saturday when the news broke. In the locker room, I didn’t say anything about this. Because it’s only a distraction. In particular, it was in the process of recruiting players,” he said, adding that he carefully responded to rumors about going to San Francisco.
“I was going to talk about this with everyone when I really decided to accept the job as a manager. Well, the whole process was omitted because of Twitter or news reports,” he said, expressing his discomfort over the rumor that the director was appointed first through media reports before he said.
“Maybe it was Ken Rosenthal (The Athletic’s chief columnist) or someone. And I got an apology from some people as well. They also expressed regret over the media, saying, “I did my job.”
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Immediately after the report came out, there were numerous calls for encouragement and good luck, but he couldn’t reply because he couldn’t make up his mind. He said: “When I first got the news I was like, ‘Well I’m not going anywhere’. I was watching our college football game on TV and it kept coming up on the screen (the news that I was going to coach San Francisco). After that, I didn’t watch the game. “Literally, that day, I completely blocked contact with the outside world,” he said, expressing his complex feelings at the time.
A day later, he was able to organize his mind by talking to coaches and players. “I’ll be forever grateful that our players texted me or told me directly and coaches encouraged me to ‘do what you have to do’. As a result, he expressed his gratitude, saying, “I have the freedom to think a little selfishly, ‘What should I do?’ rather than worrying about how this decision will affect people.”
Vitello was eventually officially appointed as a coach on October 22nd local time and took over as San Francisco’s coach with an inauguration ceremony on the 30th of the same month.
NBC Sports Bay Area, which reported the news, said, “The news of Beitelo’s appointment did not come out as he hoped, but he realized that rumors were spreading rapidly in the Major League.”
[San Francisco (USA) = KIM JAE HO, MK Sports Correspondent]