Tennessee baseball exposes Vanderbilt as ultimate baseless whiners

Accusing Tennessee baseball of cheating is nothing new for Vanderbilt Commodores coach Tim Corbin. You’d think a guy who has built up a program into a two-time national champion over 20 years wouldn’t waste his time about a program that was irrelevant for most of that same period.

However, Corbin is always ready to start something. It began in 2009, when he implied Cody Hawn was using a juiced bat after hitting a home run for UT. The bat was ruled legal, and then-Vols head coach Todd Raleigh willingly gave it to the umpire to be examined further. You can read about all of that on AL.com.

Why Corbin was wasting his time going after Tennessee baseball during the Raleigh years is beyond any of us. That didn’t stop him from lending credence to suspicion behind UT’s bats again. Now, as the No. 1 team in the country that entered the series with 19 more homers than any other team, there is even more of a target.

In the first inning of Friday’s game, Jordan Beck appeared to hit a home run. However, the umpires waived it off after checking the bat and realized that it didn’t have the updated sticker to show it had been approved for this series. Enter the conspiracies once again.

Tony Vitello had his own fun with the joke, referring to Beck as Mike Honcho in a sarcastic interview about the whole situation. He jokingly said Beck forged his transcript and is actually 35 years old. Here is the clip of the entire video.

To prove it wasn’t just about the home runs, the Vols decided to win this series in a different way. They hit one homer every game, but none of them would have made a difference. In all three games, they drove in enough runs without homers to win. You can’t explain great pitching with juiced bats.

That didn’t stop Corbin from lending more credibility to the conspiracy, though. Based on his own words, he had this suspicion entering the series and was planning to somehow catch the Vols in the act. According to him, doing this “just made sense.”

For the Vols’ part, the explanation is that the updated sticker fell off the bat. Still, conspiracies raged throughout the weekend, despite the umpires checking every bat and no illegal juicing being found. Vandy fans in the stands and on Twitter couldn’t stop talking about it though.

However, John Wilkerson of WNML had the mic drop on Monday. He reported that all of Tennessee baseball’s bats were checked and cleared Thursday before the series. The only bat not cleared was a Vanderbilt bat. Beck’s bat was removed after that homer was waived off. Here’s the thread.

Taking all this into account, it’s pretty clear any accusation of cheating is baseless. The Vols didn’t need any of their home runs to pull off this sweep, all of their bats were cleared by the umpires, and the bats in question weren’t used if there was any suspicion.

What does this all mean? Well, Vanderbilt is baselessly whining about the fact that they don’t have the Vols’ number in the one sport they are used to having it. Baseball is where they can usually have pride over Rocky Top, but Vitello has turned UT into the biggest target in the SEC.

Now, Tennessee baseball is the class of the league, and Vandy just can’t take it. Again, Corbin clearly does a lot of complaining for a coach who has had so much success. It’s almost like the little brother complex still exists between the Vols and the Commodores. That was on clear display this past weekend.