SAN FRANCISCO — Giants manager Tony Vitello has taken a much different path than the two biggest coaching stars in the Bay Area.
Long before he became the coach of the Warriors, Steve Kerr played 15 years in the NBA. Kyle Shanahan’s path was paved by his dad, two-time Super Bowl champion Mike Shanahan, and he was an accomplished offensive coordinator before taking over the 49ers.
Vitello on Wednesday will become the first to manage a Major League Baseball game with no prior professional experience, and Buster Posey believes he one day will be viewed in a similar light as the other big-time coaches in the Bay Area. That’s in part because of the way Vitello has prepared for this job, including the fact that he considers himself a fan of coaches.
Vitello, the son of a high school coach, has gone out of his way over the years to meet successful coaches in other sports, and in recent months he got a chance to hang with both Kerr and Shanahan.
The manager and some of his players went up to San Francisco after FanFest in San Jose in January to take in a Warriors game and then shoot around on a practice court. That was a memorable experience for a specific reason.
“It’s hard to stand there and keep your composure when you’re talking to Steve Kerr, especially (as) a guy that was a Bulls fan,” Vitello said on Monday’s Giants Talk podcast. “I’m from St. Louis but my dad is from Chicago and we didn’t have an NBA team.”
That meeting took place on the same day that Vitello wore a 49ers cap to FanFest to show support for a team that had a playoff game that night. A few weeks later, he found himself in a suite at the Super Bowl with Shanahan. He called that his highlight of the game.
Vitello said chatting with Shanahan “was a big box that I wanted to check” this offseason. He has always been a big fan of Mike Shanahan’s teams and knows some people who played with Kyle Shanahan and had nothing but positive things to say.
“I know everyone thinks the guy that wins the trophy at the end of the year is the best coach, and maybe he did the best job that given year, but it’s hard to say he’s not the best coach in the NFL,” Vitello said on Giants Talk. “Fans sometimes get a little too excited. You’ve got to take into account injuries, and when you start the playoffs in any sport, chaos can happen. But consistency to me is what makes a mark and he’s pretty special.”
While Shanahan works in Santa Clara, Vitello’s new office will be walking distance from Kerr’s, and he said the two talked a bit about life in the city. Vitello said both coaches told him to stay true to his roots, which is the same advice he has gotten from others over the years, including former Boston Celtics coach Brad Stevens, another coach that Vitello has idolized. They met years ago when Stevens still was at Butler and Vitello was a college assistant.
That advice shouldn’t be hard to follow for Vitello, who talked often of authenticity in his first spring with the Giants. The plan is for that to lead to better days for the Giants, who have lagged behind the Warriors and 49ers for the past decade.
Vitello saw at Tennessee that winning programs sometimes build off one another, and he’s hopeful that’s the same in the Bay Area in the future.
“I don’t know what it is but there’s some sort of synergy where one feeds off the other and it just creates a vibe, and we certainly want to do our part with that,” he said.
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