His team was on its way to a 42-run win, but Ryan Palmer was the one looking for answers.

A game that no one wanted to play and a situation no one wants to see unfold was taking place before the Dirigo baseball coach’s eyes. Walk after walk after walk. Pitches skipping a foot in front of the plate. Others sailing over the catcher’s head. Runs piling up, despite both teams’ efforts to stop them.

The result was ugly. Dirigo beat Boothbay, 43-1, last Friday in a game that became less and less enjoyable as it stretched on and on.

“I turned and faced the bleachers after one of our batters, I looked at a few of our parents and I said ‘I don’t know what to do,’ ” Palmer said. ” ‘I’ve never been in this situation before.’ ”

There aren’t many answers to be found. Palmer couldn’t find one, and neither could Hall-Dale and Monmouth in 33-0 and 40-0 victories over Wiscasset, respectively. Baseball is the only sport where “What can you do?” is a rhetorical question. In football, you can speed up the clock and kneel away the remaining minutes. In hockey, you can cycle the puck around until time expires. You can do the same with the ball in basketball, and in soccer. Tennis is built with mercy in mind; the more dominant you are, the sooner the match is over.

Baseball is the rare sport where there’s no clock to kill, and where being merciful requires the overpowered team to do some of the work. The only way to end a baseball game is with outs. What do you do if the other team can’t get them?

“I’m running through my head, thinking to myself ‘Am I doing anything wrong?’ And I said ‘I don’t think I am,’ ” said Palmer, whose team was up 25-1 after the first inning. “(In that situation again) I would go about it the same way.”

Because of that, it’s hasty to look at the 43 runs and just assume Dirigo didn’t do all it could to limit the damage. Palmer tried. Going into the second inning, he told his players to swing at pitches between their chin and their ankles. The starters didn’t hit after the first inning. The Cougars stole one base early in the first, then stopped running after that, opting to stay put even on passed balls and wild pitches. And yet, the game got more and more out of hand, with Boothbay — hit hard by school vacation week and missing its top five players — eventually walking more than 30 batters.

“When the bases are loaded and a walk happens, a run has to score. When the bases are loaded and one of my players gets a hit, a run has to score,” he said. “We were just going station to station, 90 feet to 90 feet. You get a guy at second base and one of my guys hits it over the center fielder’s head all the way to the fence, I’m sorry, that runner on second has to score. That’s the way the game is played.”

Palmer said there was a line he wasn’t going to cross. He wasn’t going to make a mockery of the game, such as holding a runner to a single on a hit to the wall. And he wasn’t going to tell his players to strike out on purpose, for fear of — understandably — creating bad habits.

“I will never, ever teach or preach intentional failure. I’m just against that,” he said. “The day my school tells me I have to is the day I walk out the door and never come back. It’s against every fiber in my body.”

We’re left with an apparent paradox. Palmer did nothing wrong, but 43-1 and 40-0 wins can’t happen. They demoralize the players on the losing team, fail to help the winners improve, take too much time and leave everyone involved with a feeling that they spent the past few hours of their lives on a waste of time.

But Palmer’s right. Players can’t be asked to intentionally fail. There might be a middle ground, however. Perhaps these ideas — done only when the game is woefully out of hand, of course — fit there:

• Take a large lead off of first. Players can hit as they would, but after a walk or a hit, take a five-, six-, seven-step lead off the base. That might count as intentionally failing, but at least the runner still gets to work on reading the pitcher and the pickoff move. This is probably the only way to combat unending walks on the mound without intentionally swinging and missing.

• Pass a teammate on the bases. Runner on first and you tag a ball into the gap? Run hard, pick up your double or triple, then either speed up or have the lead runner slow down to create the automatic out. The batter gets credit for the hit, and the game is that much closer to being over.

• Leave early on a pop-up or sacrifice fly. Teams way ahead wouldn’t try to score on a fly ball, but that doesn’t mean they’re doing everything they can to bring a quick end to the game. Leave the base as soon as the ball is hit, and if it is caught, keep going. If not scoring on a deep fly ball isn’t a mockery of the game, leaving early shouldn’t be either.

• Bunt every at-bat. The team ahead gets to practice bunting, which could pay off in close games later on, and the game gets that much closer to a more painless finish.

Of course, any option needs the opponent to do its share. Not always a given.

But when the alternative is a 40-run win, it’s worth a try.

“It was such a tough situation,” Palmer said.

And, in baseball, it’s sometimes a hard one to avoid.

Drew Bonifant — 621-5638

dbonifant@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @dbonifantMTM

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