SAN FRANCISCO — Born a Midwesterner, adopted by Southerners, Tony Vitello was a long way from home when he was introduced Thursday as the next manager of the San Francisco Giants. It wasn’t, however, the first time the 47-year-old headed west while charting unfamiliar terrain.

“He was probably the most passionate about baseball of all the players that we had,” Debra Cole said of the college-aged Vitello who arrived at their house in Salinas, some 100 miles south of Oracle Park, in the summer of 2001. “And, seriously, he was a whole lot of fun. But I can’t talk about that.”

As he attempts to make the first successful jump from college straight to the major-league managerial ranks, Vitello faces a different set of challenges than his first entreaty to California. Back then, he slept in the

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