The San Francisco Giants are embroiled in a scandal completely of their own making. And it just keeps getting worse.
The San Francisco Chronicle published a piece on Friday that confirms what I said in my opinion post on Thursday. The players were not forced to wear the Pride hats that members of the team defaced on Pride Night. Nor did they do so out of any semblance of a feeling of being discriminated against.
No, no. It was an entirely unforced error. And one that they had, apparently, spent weeks planning. Per the Chronicle’s reporting. And what’s worse is that manager Tony Vitello apparently knew about it the whole time and even helped the players navigate how they would perform their very optional protest.
You know, the protest of the thing they weren’t being forced to participate in. The one that they chose to make a “personal” stand on to display their own homophobia, rather than just opting out of wearing the hats and moving on with their lives.
And then, you know, complaining about not being able to move on with their lives because they were being forced to face the consequences of their own actions. I guess we should all just accept that they hate us and let them move on. But I’m not interested in doing that.
So yes, they spent weeks planning this protest without ever once, seemingly, even taking a single moment to ponder how that would play out among the fanbase that supports them. Really shortsighted work on their part.
But what gets me is that Tony Vitello reportedly knew the whole time. Not only did he know, he helped them plan it. You know, the person who should have known better. The person who should have advised against it. The person who most assuredly either informed the ownership group, or neglected to do so which would be even worse.
Which means that we can safely assume that the ownership group was aware of the planned protest and through their lack of actions allowed it to proceed.
Firing Tony Vitello would be the absolute least that the Giants organization could do to make amends at this point. He is so very clearly in over his head on a human level, that it almost doesn’t even matter how poorly he is doing on a baseball level. And he is also failing at that.
So yes, Vitello should absolutely be the first firing from this shameful ordeal. But he should not be the last, and if they do fire him we should not accept his scapegoating as enough.
Because the rot starts well above him.
As I said on Thursday, it’s time to clean house and Vitello would only be the first move in that. But it would be a meaningful one.
Read the full article here