This has got to be it, right? This postseason has to be the straw that breaks Bud Selig's immovability on the subject. His sport is becoming a fraud. After spending the first two rounds of the playoffs talking as much about the blown calls by the umps as the game on the field, last night was another umpiring apocalypse.

Blown call #1: The Yankees have runners on first and second with one out. Johnny Damon hits a liner down the first base line. Philly 1st baseman Ryan Howard snags the ball thisclose to the ground. Jorge Posada, who was on first, has advanced to second. After the grab, Howard immediately throws down wide of second base. Jimmy Rollins tracks it down and, while Posada stands and claps on 2nd base, he is tagged. Double play. What happened? The 1st base umpire ruled that the ball was caught on the fly, and Damon was out. Also, that means Posada needed to tag up, so he was called out. A potential back breaking rally was snuffed out.

It was also the wrong call. Daytrader, who I was on the phone with at the time because we are like 12 year old girls when sports are on, immediately called that it was a trap instead of a catch. But even more damning evidence were the actions of Howard. Why was he even throwing to second base? If he had caught it, he would have just trotted over to first and tagged the base to double up Posada. He threw down to second trying to start a double play, because he knew he trapped the ball.

This highlighted portion is important, because umpire apologists will say that, if we had instant replay, we wouldn't have known where to put the runner. In fact, Buck Showalter tried to make this case on SportsCenter last night after the game. I don't have an exact quote, but it went something like this: "If we go back in the replay and find that the wrong call was made, we still have to decide where to put the runners. Since the play might have unfolded differently if a different call was made on the field, then our best choice is to stick with the demonstrably wrong result of an inning-ending double play."

Buck, there is a reason that two teams have won the World Series immediately after you left: you are a fucking moron. Howard reacted exactly as if the ball was not caught by throwing to second. If he had attempted to pretend he caught it and doubled Posada up, then you would have a decision to make. This is not what happened.

And even if it had, maybe we wouldn't have gotten the perfect result, but we wouldn't have gotten a definitely, awfully wrong result. STUPID STUPID BUCK SHOWALTER.

But it happened, and the Phillies came up to bat, which resulted in...

Blown call #2: Mariano Rivera is pitching to Chase Utley with runners on 1st and 2nd with one out. Utley grounds a ball to Yankees 2nd baseman Cano, who spins and throws to Jeter for the out and second. Jeter then fires the ball down to Teixeira at first for an inning ending 4-6-3 double play. Except...

...yup, you guessed it, Utley beat the throw down the line by half a step, as clearly visible on instant replay. Which leads to the 2nd stupid defense of no instant replay: the makeup call.

See, the umps fixed it! They made it fair for everybody by screwing up twice. Hear that kids? Two wrongs make a right! Now go punch your sister because she just spilled your juice.

The only defense left about keeping instant replay out is that sucky umpires are somehow "part of the game." You know what else was part of the game? Not letting black people play was part of the game. That's right, I'm playing the race card. If you don't want instant replay in baseball, then YOU ARE A RACIST. You don't want to be a racist, do you?

The real reason that we never had instant replay is because the technology was never good enough. But now we have widescreen, hi-def, slo-mo video of every play from 17 angles. We can see the game better than the umps. Even they will admit it. And when the umps admit that they can no longer do their jobs, it is time to make a change.