NASHVILLE, Tn — No. 1 Tennessee’s weekend series at No. 9 Vanderbilt was bound to be full of drama and hate. It took all of three-batters to come to fruition in the Vols’, 6-2, series opening win over Vanderbilt.
Tennessee right fielder Jordan Beck took a 1-2 pitch just over the right field wall at Hawkins Field. 1-0 Tennessee. Well, not so fast my friend.
Vanderbilt — seemingly catcher Dominic Keegan — requested for the umpires to inspect Beck’s bat. After a discussion between the four-man umpire crew, Beck was ruled out.
The SEC released this statement in the middle of the game about the incident.
“In pre-series bat testing, a sticker with the logo of the opposing team is placed on legal bats. There was a sticker on the bat in question, but it was not an appropriate sticker on the bat. It was a sticker from a midweek game. Therefore the bat was deemed illegal.”
Tennessee head coach Tony Vitello was worked up after the ruling, but the thrill of victory calmed his spirits postgame where he conceded the decision was the correct one by the umpires.
“He didn’t have a sticker on the bat, which is the rules,” Vitello said. “Didn’t have a sticker on the bat. Come to find out that might have helped us down the road, if you are going to say that. I don’t really know how to explain it. A couple of others had fallen off, too. You come on a Thursday night and practice. Or we play Western Carolina, as soon as they get off the bus, you test those bats and make sure they are legal. I think our league is the only league — I don’t know if we get stickers on a Tuesday or not. I don’t really care. In league play, you always have those. Good deal for Jordan. He squared up another ball really well. To me, he has got a break coming to him somewhere down the road.”
When asked postgame, Beck said he noticed the sticker fall off while hitting in the batting cages earlier in the day.
“Actually, you know, I was hitting in the cage earlier and I looked down and I seen it fly off but I didn’t really think much about it,” Beck said. “Whatever, just put the bat back down and came back out for the game and didn’t think much of it.
“I was in the dugout. I had no idea. I turned around and they were like ‘they’re checking the bat’ and as soon as they said they were checking the bat I was like, ‘dude, I watched the sticker fall off.’ It was kind of just like, ah, I don’t know.”
Both Vitello and Beck claimed that other players had the sticker fall off their bats between the time they were inspected on Thursday and first pitch on Friday.
So, is it common for these stickers to fall off? Depends who you ask. Beck claims that it isn’t an uncommon occurrence while Vitello pleaded ignorance on the subject.
“That is a first for me, brother,” Vitello said. “I probably need to be a better details guy. That ain’t my territory. God gave me a few strengths. That ain’t one.”
“It happens a lot,” Beck said. “It kind of goes on the grip and it’ll fall off sometimes. Next time I’ll just pay more attention to it.”
Beck — who used Drew Gilbert’s bat the rest of the game — delivered the two-out, two-RBI double that broke the game open in the fifth inning. The junior right fielder was quick to point that out when asked what his message would be to those claiming he and Tennessee are cheating.
“That’s kind of funny actually,” Beck said. “But no, we have some real firepower this year. I would say the other ball that I hit in the gap too was hit pretty well too and that was with a different bat too. The bats don’t matter. You could give us wood bats and it really doesn’t matter to us. We have an explosive team and we’re going to keep doing it this year.”
The first inning of Friday’s series opener at Hawkins Field provided a weekend’s worth of excitement and also improved Tennessee’s win streak to 17 games — a program record.
Tennessee will go for its first series win over Vanderbilt in the Vitello era Saturday. First pitch is set for 8 p.m. ET.
