Tim McClelland Believes In His Heart That Nick Swisher Didn't Tag Up

Anyone else getting tired of umpires holding postgame press conferences to breakdown their poor decision making processes? It's bad enough we have to listen Joe Girardi explain his terrible bullpen moves, but this is getting out of hand.

Tim McClelland—who has been a Major League Umpire for 26 years—admitted after last night's ALCS game the he botched two calls. The most egregious one was the should've-been double play, where Robinson Cano and Jorge Posada were both caught stranded off third base, but only Posada was ruled out. McClelland came to the press room afterward to explain himself and said that he was expecting both players to tag the base and he thought Cano was touching third when he was tagged. Oops.

His explanation for the earlier gaffe is a little less solid. McClelland said that "in his heart" he believed Nick Swisher left third base early on a sacrifice fly and called him out on appeal. Even though replays appeared to show that he was wrong, McClelland said "I'm not sure I believe the replay of the first one." I think more umps and referees should use that excuse: The heart wants what it wants! And his heart wants Nick Swisher to be out. How you gonna argue with that?

By the way, McClelland's Wikipedia page was locked late last night so don't bother trying to convince people he's a known goat fucker or anything. (Sadly, the line about him being a Michigan State grad is not vandalism.)

Bill Klem Would Be Ashamed [ESPN] Umpire Tim McClelland makes the worst call of all time [Big League Stew] October 20 - Tim M cClelland [ASAP Sports]