"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."
Tim Jamieson added walk-on Tony Vitello to Missouri after Vitello's freshman season at Spring Hill College, a former NAIA program that moved to Division II. Greg Vitello, Tony's father and a longtime St. Louis coach, asked Jamieson to take a chance on his son. Jamieson agreed and described Tony as a scrub walk-on. Jamieson's belief in Vitello’s competitiveness, tenacity, loyalty, and teamwork helped Vitello transition immediately from playing to coaching after three seasons as a Missouri infielder (2000–02). Vitello's first coaching role was associate head coach for the Salinas Packers, then he joined Jamieson’s staff as a volunteer assistant in 2003.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]