Tennessee baseball coach Tony Vitiello celebrated another berth in the College World Series on Sunday at Lindsey Nelson Stadium.
He then unleashed a seven-minute opening statement in his post-match press conference to discuss his view on success. Vitello’s comments followed a question after UT’s 10-8 loss to Evansville on Saturday that asked whether Tennessee’s success this season would be decided in Game 3 of the Knoxville Super Regional tournament.
Vitello stated that the question bothered first baseman Blake Burke, who was sitting in the news conference with Vitello.
Here’s what Vitello had to say after the Vols went 12-1 to return to Omaha:
“Congratulations to our fans, for sure. I mean, the cheering, certainly the loudest it’s ever been here. Congratulations to our players. Obviously they’ve worked as hard as anyone left at this point in the season. And obviously a huge congratulations to Evansville, I didn’t really know how to say it or Show it or even hear me describe how much respect we have for their program and this team in particular.
“So I’ll leave it at that. And after talking about their program, Coach (Wes) Carroll has stayed at quite a few hotels as a recruiting guy, and so have I. So you guys made a mistake by giving me the opportunity. So I’ll add to my opening statement where we left off ( Saturday) where someone asked me a question that upset one of my players, so I’ll support him but again, if you have to interrupt me, cut me off but I’ve stayed in a lot of hotels to be in this situation by myself and run around and watch the games, and I think we did that from A to Z while I was Well, anyone who’s thinking about visiting our place that we’re hiring and you think this is a place where you can come and lend a hand and see how much money we can offer you, don’t waste our time and don’t waste your time either.
“But the question was basically asked about our season and if we lost (Sunday), it would all be for nothing, and Blake Burke wasn’t very happy about that. Blake Burke has invested a lot in this particular program. If I were Blake, that day, I would have been a little wild about it. The thing and I was going to say, “B, you didn’t have me shooting in the gym or something like that but he kept his composure. Obviously you’ve seen me in action, I don’t have a lot of composure, so I’ll talk about that for a second because it started.” When we were No. 1 for most of the season, that’s not a true statement. I don’t know who the No. 1 player was in the pre-season because I don’t look at it. It’s a very difficult sport to predict what’s going to happen. And then they weren’t We’ve been in first place for the majority of this season, in fact, when we first took over, I was amazed that Kentucky won the league, which is what you guys wrote about – it’s one of the most if not the most competitive league and they were No. 1 in the division but Somehow we were number one in the writers poll but we weren’t for most of the season and we had to work to get to that point.
“But again, the word success is very important to me in this room. We have these guys write down what success is to them and we teach them that they need to define what a successful hit is or what a successful outing is. Whatever it is, it’s Noah Webster – Webster’s Dictionary says that Success is a degree or measure of achievement or if you read in another deal online, a degree or measure of success, so these two words are definitely there smartest fellow and measure means that you get to choose what success is, which is pretty cool so maybe Noah doesn’t know how to define it with Those guys where you gotta sweat, you gotta be in weight you gotta trust the guy if you give up the ground ball, can (he) make the play for you or if you give up the run the other guy’s going to go work with you that, but he was a thinker And the big thing about Noah was that he loved his country, which is kind of a lost art here so I don’t know the guy, but I have a lot of respect for him and I liked the way he wrote that whole deal in terms of degree or measure.
“For me, I have a choice. I’ve been around my father a lot. He can’t tell me what to do. I don’t consider myself – I work for people here, but I’m my own boss when I come. Here and for me, success is part of the package. When Our group is having success. I consider myself a teammate. For these people, it means I have a level of success, but there’s also the part that I have to do. I have to make decisions, and if you’re going to put all my decisions in a bucket for the weekend, then I’ve made bad decisions. More than the right decisions, for example, maybe Dalton Pargo should have hit me yesterday and had some success today and I’m not sure he wouldn’t have done that yesterday as well if we hit him on (Shane) Harris because he wants to go home and he’s going to go home (to Omaha) but you. You know what Bargs does, success for me is being a good teammate, and that’s the guy I get along with, without a doubt, for a lot of reasons the team, the one thing I mentioned after last season, because I was in the bathroom crying with a lot of emotions after we were able to… Beating Clemson last year, I come to work every day and get out of my car excited. And to have fun and be around people who want to be here and be in an environment that you’re excited to come to every day. 100% success. Omaha is a real fun to go to. If you don’t play well, it won’t be that fun. But I don’t really care to be honest with you. As a matter of fact, we can kind of pick up where Evansville left off. We’re not supposed to win because first place never wins. So the house money. So I would consider that a bigger success this year, but definitely due to that group in particular being what it is.
“And then I think 2022 was thrown in. We could have won 30 games in 2022. Jared Dickey, who had a great social media post today, transformed his entire body after leaving baseball as part of one of the best teams and had success as an individual Among the many other great things that happened about this, you didn’t like the team so what?
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“And the one thing I definitely want to say about Evansville, Mr. Ramsey, Ty, I guess. Sorry if I got your first name wrong. Last one out of the game. Not rubbing it, not pointing fingers, okay? Be I told you you couldn’t play.” Absolutely in Omaha, you know Ramsey can get on a plane and go to Omaha any time he wants, well you know what’s not easy to do? Get blown up, get stitches, hurt your shoulder, and on top of that, to play in today’s game, you saw that? Man, that guy made me nervous, I saw a bunch of shots that guy did when we watch the video and he made me nervous so, Omaha or not, who cares about this guy and when he grows up, he’s going to be able to look everyone in the eye and say, “When I play, I do it.’ I don’t know what the hell his batting average is, I was a Warrior at one point, part of one of the best Evansville teams ever from his teammates or going back to that facility in Evansville, they’ll say, ‘Hell, yeah, there “That man over there.”
Mike Wilson covers University of Tennessee athletics. Email him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @By Mike Wilson. If you enjoy Mike’s coverage, Consider a digital subscription It will allow you to access all of it.