The egregious call at first base by the umpire Jim Joyce that cost a Detroit Tigers pitcher, Armando Galarraga, the chance to be only the 21st major-league pitcher to have tossed a perfect game has unleashed consternation on the land. History is denied! Incompetence reigns! Something must be done! Expand instant replay!

Nah.

First of all, history wasn’t denied; it was made. Galarraga’s magnificent performance last Wednesday will always be the perfect game with the asterisk, the one every commentator mentions whenever perfect games are mentioned, the tainted perfect game and thus the most famous perfect game of all time.

Second, Joyce’s bungle — and oh, man, it was a beaut! — has hardly reigned. A sturdy baseball citizen who has served in the big leagues with distinction (which for umpires is to say without) since 1989, he was reduced to tears by the fact of his ill-timed mistake and its being trumpeted on front pages and television broadcasts around the world. You think that’s not being held accountable?

And something must be done? Why? Umpires have been ingrained in major-league baseball since the inception of the National League in 1876, somewhere approaching 200,000 games ago, and it’s likely that the umps have botched a call or two in every one of them since then. Somehow this has not eroded the fan base or undermined the integrity of the competition, which is something that the players and the owners have periodically done.