This column originally ran in The Standard-Times on Feb. 12, 2017.

By Nick Tavares
Pʀᴇsᴇɴᴛ Tᴇɴsᴇ

It’s the answer to an age-old question that doesn’t exist — how can we end all these 19-inning marathons plaguing Major League Baseball?

Thankfully, there’s a solution to this extra-inning problem that doesn’t exist, and the needless tinkering with baseball could continue this year.

The reported proposal would place a runner on second base to start the inning, beginning with the 11th, in an effort to increase scoring and therefore increase the probability that a game ends quickly.

The plan is going to be implemented in the upcoming World Baseball Classic, and would go into effect only in rookie ball this season — so not even Single A level games —  but this is clearly an idea that could be fast tracked to the majors, and it’s absurd.

In 2016, teams played an average of 12 extra-inning games apiece. The National League wild-card winners each earned their spots by one game, and the American League winners only had a 2.5 game cushion. Having teams play each other in a one-game playoff match-ups each year is bad enough. Having those spots possibly be decided because of a game won or lost on this new rule would be bizarre.

There’s a valid argument to be made about shortening and managing minor league games as much as possible. While the pitch clock has yet to make it’s Major League debut (thankfully), it’s still early enough to think that it could be instilling good habits that keep pitchers moving quickly even after their promotion.

Having games end within a certain amount of time would also decrease the wear and tear on those young players, especially the pitchers, and could lessen the burden of decreased travel time that minor league teams might face on, say, a travel night following a 15-inning game. It ruins the chance that another team could outdo Pawtucket and Rochester’s epic 33-inning game from 1981, but that’s about it for arguments against it.

But just because those measures might make sense in the minors, or in the World Baseball Classic, doesn’t mean it has a place in deciding games that matter.

Comparing anything favorably against the World Baseball Classic is to undo the integrity of the argument, anyway. As entertaining as the world tournament can be, a playoff built on pitch counts and forced into the early half of spring training is not one to be emulated.

A better corollary might be the NHL, which waged a preemptive war against the tie following the 2004-05 lockout. Instead of addressing the issues with declining ratings (wiping out an entire season apparently had nothing to do with it), the league did away with the draw and instituted a shoot-out, forcing in an unnatural conclusion to games.

This season has seen the league switch to a 3-on-3 format for overtime in an effort to have fewer games end in a shootout, instead of just admitting that hockey fans would probably be fine if ties came back, confident that this would be their ticket to higher ratings.

Baseball shouldn’t have to worry about any of this. Attendance is steady and local TV ratings continued to climb from 2015 to 2016. In addition, the presence of the Cubs and Indians in the last World Series led to the most-watched baseball game of the past 25 years. Who is asking for this drastic a change?

There will be the purists knocking any change to the game, inevitably, and those arguments tend to get lost in the world of old men yelling at clouds.

But there should also be fans who enjoy the continuous integrity of the game who won’t want to see it travel down the same path of ridiculous gimmicks that have plagued hockey for the past decade.

This is an answer to a question that doesn’t exist. There’s no need to brainstorm those up now.

Nick Tavares' column appears Sundays in The Standard-Times and at SouthCoastToday.com. He can be reached at nick@nicktavares.com