Opening day for the 2026 Major League Baseball season will be held Wednesday. One game will be contested between San Francisco and the Yankees .
First pitch between the Giants and New York is slated for 8:05 p.m. EDT and can be watched on Netflix.
Wednesday will mark the first regular-season game for Tony Vitello as San Francisco's manager. He is the 40th manager all time for the Giants.
Vitello served as Tennessee's head coach from 2018-25 and compiled a 341–131 (125–85 SEC) record.
He guided the Vols to a 2024 national championship, two SEC Tournament titles (2022, 2024), two SEC regular season championships (2022, 2024) and three College World Series appearances (2021, 2023-24).
"If you talk about risk, it kind of sounds like you can lose it all if it doesn't go well," Vitello said when he was introduced as San Francisco's manager. "To me, this was more about a challenge. No matter how each day goes, and again to beat up the theme, I am very well aware there's a higher sample size, so therefore more days, regardless of how it goes, are you willing to meet the challenge?
"What a challenge is, is something that you find out what you can and can't do. That's something we preached to our players all the time at Tennessee, so who am I to preach that but to not do it. When you head into a challenge, you want a level of confidence, and again there are so many unknowns. I can't tell you what that level is from me, but the level of the people surrounding me here, whether it's the roster, which is pretty good, or the other people in the organization, and in particular the guy sitting to the right of me ( Buster Posey ), the confidence is through the roof."
More: Tony Vitello joins Dick Howser in going directly from college baseball to MLB
More: Tony Vitello could join Bobby Winkles as college, MLB champions
Follow Vols Wire on Facebook and X (formerly Twitter).
This article originally appeared on Vols Wire: Watch Tony Vitello's MLB opening day debut with Giants versus Yankees
