Open letter to the Umps: Tonight is your last chance to run a post-season without Instant Review

Dear Madams or Sirs,

Mess up tonight, and you're Pogs.

You're Balloon Boy. You're Y2K. You're XFL.

You're history.

One-hundred and twenty years of tradition... going, going, gone.

The nation is glued to the LA-NY series, mostly in hopes of an asteroid. While it waits for the fireball, it's watching a bunch of blue-uniformed Spice Girls turn the National Pastime into the National Basketball Association. People are concluding -- through basic deduction -- that you are systematically making up for one deliriously bad call by purposely missing the next one.

Nick Swisher picked off second. Horrible. Nick Swisher out on appeal. Horrible.

Two horribles = One correct?

You are Lindsay Lohan's looks. You are CompuServe. You are Elliot Spitzer's political career.

But, get this: Comrades... thus far, you've been lucky.

You haven't cost somebody a game. You are one game-defining flub from spending the rest of your lives on YouTube, from becoming a Leno punchline, from spending next season standing on the field, waiting for some gin-breathed nephew of Bud Selig up in the booth to tell you what you just saw.

One screw-up from becoming the most inconsequential figures in all of sports.

Have you had a good hard look at Lindsay Lohan lately?

Be careful. This is no time to be going blind.