Replacing Wrigley's scoreboard would be plain wrong

	The hand-operated Wrigley Field scoreboard is one of baseball's most iconic symbols. Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

After reading a recent story in the Chicago Tribune about why Wrigley Field needs a garish electronic scoreboard, I immediately thought of Meg Ryan having plastic surgery. And I reached the same conclusion: Why?

Why is a new scoreboard necessary? Why ruin a good thing? Why turn the When Harry Met Sally Meg Ryan into the ... umm ... one who's in -- checking imdb.com -- In the Cut? Did anyone actually see that movie? More important, have you seen Meg Ryan lately? Apparently she wasn't content with her semi-under-the-radar, girl-next-door, traditional hotness and went the plastic route. She now looks like a trout that was caught, released, caught again, and then held by the tail and slapped around the inside of a boat.

Eradicating Wrigley's hand-operated scoreboard in favor of a JumboTron would be like putting Groucho Marx glasses on the Lincoln Memorial or party hats on the Mount Rushmore quartet. Why not just fill in the Grand Canyon with sand and erect a giant digital display of photographs of the Canyon? Or paint over the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and install some hanging flat-screen monitors that feature Michelangelo works? When did authenticity become so overrated?

In 1937, Bill Veeck, the same man who signed a midget to play for the St. Louis Browns in 1951, was asked to renovate Wrigley. He added the ivy and the scoreboard, which, for its time, was innovative.

"When Bill Veeck put in that old scoreboard before the 1938 season," Eric Benderoff wrote in the Tribune, "it was based on a new concept. According to the Cubs Encyclopedia, instead of using lights that could be turned on or off, Veeck chose a design that used magnetic 'eyelids' that could be pulled up or down to change the score. It was considered innovative at the time."

So what is it now? Just old?