Quote:
Originally Posted by jkumpire
"I thought Cano was on the base," McClelland said. "I was waiting for two players to be on the base, and then there was never the situation where both of them were on the base at the same time. When [Napoli] tagged Cano, I thought Cano was on the base, and when [Napoli] tagged Posada out, I thought Posada was out.
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This quote is actually a bit off. McClelland actually called "Posada" by his first name during the quote twice -- using "Jorge." He didn't ever refer to the Angels by name, though -- using pronouns.
This really struck me when I saw the replay of the press conference. I'm wondering what you guys think about this. I've never umpired baseball. I understand that baseball tends to have different conventions from other sports, and that given names are frequently used on the field between players, managers and umpires. You really wouldn't hear this in other sports, where officials would tend to use numbers or positions or simply "the defender" or something like that describe a play.
I found McClelland's use of the names during his press conference to indicate a level of informality. I'm sure his use of names for yankees but not angels was coincidence, but it's something for the conspiracy theories. I don't care for it, but again I understand baseball is unique in its conventions in this regard.