TOO MANY RUNS can mean too much discouragement .(Shutterstock).

If there’s a name for recent local high school softball contests, it might be The Week Of the One-Sided.

Wednesdays and Thursdays games resulted in seven blowouts in which the winner outscored the loser by double figures. Two games were even decided by 20 runs.

On Thursday, Anaheim thumped Orange League rival Magnolia 22-2 and in another OL game, Western beat Century 20-0. Almost as big a beating was Edison’s 19-2 win over Newport Harbor and Orange’s 18-2 win over Saddleback.

Some of the baseball games were not quite nail-biters. On Wednesday, Edison beat Marina 11-2 and Anaheim bested Western 8-0 on Thursday. 

Many sports have a “mercy rule” and softball is no exception. There is some variety among the professional, college and high school levels.

For high schools, the rule has been that a game ends when one team is ahead after a requisite number of runs are scored after a certain number of innings.

We’re not suggesting that the outcome of these games represented bad sportsmanship on anybody’s part. And it’s certainly hard to tell a player – who may not previously had much playing time – not to try his/her hardest in order to keep the score down.

But it’s also hard to tell your team to “hang in there” and “keep your head up” as the runs pour across the plate. It’s pretty hard to take when you’re 15 years old.

Maybe a good “mercy rule” would be to require that the winner would be compelled to take the other team to In-N-Out after the game. Nobody likes to lose, but those strawberry shakes can ease a lot of hurt feelings.