Should MLB embrace instant replay? Nay: We shouldn’t repeat the past

There is an increasingly distressing quality to American life: The “what-if” syndrome. It is the notion that we would be better off if we can revisit a moment in our past when things didn’t go the way we wanted them to ? and suddenly make everything right.Pop culture reflects this. Billy Ray Cyrus once sang about someone losing his intended bride to another suitor (“It could have been me standing there with you/It could have been me and my dreams coming true”). Sarah Jessica Parker and John Corbett showed us what happens when the former lovers they portrayed on TV improbably get back together in the latest hit movie.Sports, meanwhile, have become the Wide World of What-If, where fans vigorously stew about their grievances. This is fine in and of itself. Athletics are a cornucopia of debatable decisions, particularly by umpires, and fans need an outlet. The problems arise when administrators try to do something about it.The airwaves were jammed Thursday with people saying baseball commissioner Bud Selig should award Detroit Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game instead of the one-hit shutout he settled for Wednesday against the Cleveland Indians. Selig ruled that the game remained a one-hitter.Galarraga took a perfect game into the ninth Wednesday. With two out, Jason Donald hit a ball that Miguel Cabrera tossed to Galarraga covering first. Umpire Jim Joyce called Donald safe. Everyone saw he wasn’t. The gracious Galarraga kept pitching and retired the final batter, his bid for perfection foiled by a blown call.It would be noble, but wrong, for baseball to infer that it must make amends through a broader use of instant replay. What makes baseball great is that you can’t revisit the past. When an at-bat ends, it’s over. When an inning ends, it’s over. And when an umpire makes a call, it’s over. Some might call this pigheaded. I say it keeps the motor of baseball running gracefully and fluidly, without the fits and starts that replay brings.Consider what happened in a different game yesterday. Boston’s Marco Scutaro led off the eighth with a home run – but Oakland manager Bob Geren argued the call. So a conference ensued over whether or not Scutaro’s shot was a home run. (It was.) The flow of the game was postponed because someone asked, “What If?”Consider, too, what’s happened with replay writ large in another sport. “Challenge” handkerchiefs have become as much a part of NFL coaches’ wardrobes as Bill Belichick’s hoodie. Do we want this now pervading baseball?The last call on replay should come from Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, a tragic hero doomed by his fruitless quest to reclaim his past. Told by pal Nick Carraway that he “can’t repeat the past,” Gatsby replies, “Why of course you can!” No. What Gatsby failed to grasp is that of all the mistakes that might have happened to us in the past, the worst mistake is not coming to terms with them and moving on to the future. From Gatsby to Galarraga, we cannot repeat the past ? and we ought not replay it, either.Rich Tenorio is The Item’s sports copy editor.