As the negotiations for a Major League Baseball collective bargaining agreement continue, let us at least dream of the postseason and perhaps a way to improve it.

Let’s go wild twice. Never having favored the expanding playoff picture in MLB, division series, wild card, etc., an idea of Steve Hirdt from the Elias Sports Bureau deserves consideration.

Elias are the folks who provide the stat stories for just about every major sport, and nobody does it better. They are the official statisticians for MLB and have researched every hidden corner of baseball’s numbers to get it right.

More importantly, they love the games they cover as true fans. Steve is a baseball junkie who cares about where the game is heading and is a traditionalist at heart. When he announces a plan to extend the playoffs, there has to be a good reason.

Hirdt believes there should be two wild-card teams from each league. Each league would conduct a one-game wild-card playoff on the day before the division series starts.

Hirdt has taken a look at the conclusions to regular seasons since the wild card came into existence. More than once, teams fighting for a division championship have gone into the final series of the regular season knowing one would be a division winner and one the wild card team.

That has lead to season ending series that should be battles for the division title being played more like spring training games, as both teams prepare for the playoffs rather than trying to win.

Hirdt says having two wild- card teams would enhance the importance of winning the division. No team would want to be forced into a one-game wild card playoff. For one thing, you could lose. Even the winning team is in a jam, since that one game would come the day before the division series starts.

That means the teams in the wild card playoff have to go to every extreme, like using starting pitchers in relief, to win that one game. The wild-card winner would not have the day’s rest before moving to the next round, would have extra travel days involved and would have extended its players in that one game.

Such a playoff game would not extend the baseball year, would add two guaranteed sellout games for MLB, would be exciting for the fans and would add season-long meaning to winning the division title.

Even as a traditionalist, with 30 teams playing, we cannot revert to the World Series as the only playoff in MLB. Too many teams would be eliminated way too early in the year.

The wild card does extend fan interest for many teams. It will for the Sox again this year, it will be for the AL West and the NL East, with Atlanta making a shambles of the rest of the division.

Adding a wild-card playoff adds to the positives of the wild- card concept while making the division title more important than ever. Additionally, such a game increases the excitement in the regular season finish. A wild-card playoff game would seem to do all this with no negative effects.

Now all we need is a postseason.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and NBC sportscaster.