BALTIMORE -- In a year full of firsts for Giants manager Tony Vitello, Friday night provided a special one: a maiden visit to Oriole Park at Camden Yards, a ballpark he dreamed of visiting since the moment it first existed.
“Once the game starts, I promise to Giants fans I won’t be geeking out,” Vitello said from the visitors’ dugout ahead of the series opener with the Orioles. “But I’ve wanted to be in this park since I was 14, I think?”
On a night the O’s debuted new City Connect uniforms paying tribute to their home, Vitello still recalled how revolutionary Camden Yards felt to a teenager growing up in St. Louis. After all, multi-purpose, cookie-cutter venues had ruled the landscape since before he could remember.
“We had all those ‘modern’ parks that had no personality. And this was one of the first … new ballparks that was supposed to look old,” Vitello said. “My dad and I both always wanted to come. If he wasn’t such a hard worker, maybe we would’ve taken a father-son road trip. But I joked earlier, this is the cheapest way for me to get into this ballpark.”
Friday also represents the beginning of Vitello’s first extended road trip as an MLB manager.
After three games in Baltimore come three midweek contests in Cincinnati and three games next weekend in Washington.
Vitello hopes to see more of what he saw while the Giants took two of three from the Padres in San Diego after starting the year being swept by the Yankees at home.
“You become a team first of all when you start playing real games, games that go on your record, and then when you get to spend time on the plane and there isn’t your family and you’re on the road,” he said. “So I hope we continue to reveal who we are a little bit. Our personality was non-existent against New York. And I thought it really came out in our second series on the road.”