There are no more games to be played this year, except for what will be rewound over eggnog and turkey legs until the spring thaw. Some of those memories will be difficult to purge without a stiff drink: why Charlie Manuel did not yank Pedro Martinez after six triumphant innings in Game 2 of the World Series, only to make the same mistake again when he allowed a weak, beaten Martinez to face Hideki Matsui with a left-handed reliever ready in Game 6. Other playoffs flashbacks will be more pleasant, whether on Broad Street or Broadway: the daily, frightening postseason redemptions of Alex Rodriguez and CC Sabathia, the heroic lashes of Chase Utley, the rise of Cliff Lee and the vintage aging of the Jeter-Rivera-Pettitte-Posada classic quartet, recalled all winter simply for the sake of delight.

The 2009 postseason will be remembered for the end of one era (the Yankees' five-year hangover from losing the 2004 American League pennant) and the beginning of another (the inevitability of full-scale instant replay in baseball). The Yankees defeated the defending titleholder Phillies and are champions again, and Rodriguez, after 2,166 regular-season games -- second most among active players to Ken Griffey Jr. -- finally joins the champions club without conditions.

Devastating losses often have devastating consequences, and until late Wednesday night, when Robinson Cano flipped Shane Victorino's ground ball to Mark Teixeira with Rivera trailing the play with his right arm cocked in an anticipatory, victorious fist pump, the 2004 AL Championship Series had reverberated through the bones of both the Yankees and Red Sox.

Boston won two titles and has never since been identified with losers, while the Yankees, once three outs from continuing their torture of the Red Sox, continued to be rich and dominant and good, winning the AL East three times to Boston and Tampa Bay's one each … but were never quite the same. Despite the names of Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield, Jason Giambi, Bobby Abreu and Kevin Brown, the big-money approach seemed bloated and desperate … the famed intimidation factor, that the Yankees always win and Boston loses, was gone. Yankees general manager Brian Cashman attempted a market correction, but all his measured, build-from-the-grassroots strategy of Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes buttressing the kids did was make everyone wonder after each poor start just exactly why Johan Santana wasn't pitching for the Yankees.

Over the past 30 days, the new group -- headlined by Sabathia, A.J. Burnett and Teixeira, fortified by Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and, of course, Mariano Rivera -- put an end to it all with a spirited championship run, charting a new course to an old location: the famed Canyon of Heroes.

In 2008, awful weather ruined the World Series, and highlighted the question of how baseball could sell out its signature event and degrade its fans for television dollars. The game responded with schizophrenia: a promised day game in the World Series that never occurred -- the last day game in the World Series was 22 years ago, in 1987 between St. Louis and Minnesota -- replaced by a West Coast day game in each Championship Series, but a World Series whose Game 7 was scheduled for Nov. 5. Next year's playoffs are scheduled to likely end in November for a second consecutive year.

This year's crisis -- the egregious umpiring during the playoffs -- represents the beginning of a new era, for baseball cannot escape this offseason without a long-term plan to deal with getting calls right. For the first time in Series history, a play -- Rodriguez's double off Cole Hamels in Game 3 -- was correctly overturned into a home run using replay. The replay debate will require a more skillful response from the baseball establishment, for the issue -- technology -- is a bit more complicated than merely finding better umpires.

From the start of the postseason, big games grew larger because of critical errors by the men in blue. C.B. Bucknor had his moments in the Boston-Angels series. Phil Cuzzi blew a huge call that might have turned around the Yankees-Minnesota series. Tim McClelland, one of the best umpires in the business -- if not the best -- gravely admitted his failure in Jorge Posada and Robinson Cano's who's-on-third act during the Angels-Yankees series.

The World Series had its moments, too. Ryan Howard trapped a ball called a double-play liner by Brian Gorman in Game 2 that killed a Yankees rally that might have broken open a close game. Utley was called out by Gorman on a key double play in the same game that might have given the Phillies a chance to rally on Rivera and go up 2-0 in the Series.

The problem is not simply the umpires, but that the technological tools are too good to ignore -- slow-motion television replays from so many angles give the television viewer even more reason to distrust umpiring. The scrutiny is so great that the technology is undermining the umpires to such a degree that the "human element" argument -- one commissioner Bud Selig and many baseball people prefer -- no longer has any validity.

In the old days, players and fans at the stadium did not know of an erroneous call until long after the game was over. Today, each stadium sometimes replays controversial calls on crystal-clear, high-definition scoreboards, for the players to see as the game is going on. Inside the stadium, each section and suite is equipped with flat-screen monitors that replay and freeze-frame (with a zoom lens) a given play.

Even the inaccurate television toys -- the graphic overlays that simulate whether a pitch was within the strike zone -- undermine the authority of the umpires.
That is not to say that the umpiring does not need a makeover as well. If technology is placing more emphasis on the umpiring, it also is doing so on the umpires. The cold fact is that many umpires are out of shape and overweight, making it difficult for them to perform the simplest of tasks, such as move quickly to reposition themselves to gain better views of plays in the field and on the base paths, as well as crouch properly behind the plate for balls and strikes.

Selig has resisted leaping too enthusiastically into the instant replay pool, and for good reason. Baseball isn't football, the sport of flags and do-overs. Unlike in football, a play in baseball has continuing ramifications beyond the spot of the controversy: runners advance, counts change. In the fourth inning of Game 4 of the World Series, Howard scored on a Pedro Feliz two-out single, but television replays showed he did not touch the plate. Sabathia never tagged Howard retroactively, instead throwing the ball to second to try to erase the advancing Feliz. How could such a play be reviewed?

In football, the do-over always can be invoked, even on touchdowns. Thousands of plays in football...