Last October, just after the end of the baseball season, I received an e-mail from my Cleveland cousin. Mort has been an Indians fan probably since Louis Sockalexis was a boy. He has lived and died through prolonged periods of losing and briefer bursts of winning.

In despair following another dreadful season, Mort wrote, “How about a column about how major leagues should make Dolan sell the Indians. He took a contending team and really ran them to the ground. Attendance this year was the worst in Major leagues. He fielded a minor league team and charged major league prices. Jacobs sold out the park, Dolan is lucky if 12,000 show up.”

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This is one of those “what might have been” stories that fill baseball lore. What might have been if this team had made that trade or that team had made this trade? Some stories were never remotely close to happening; some were pure fiction, the creation of someone’s overactive imagination. Others had basis in fact.

My favorite is probably the story that the Yankees and the Red Sox discussed a trade of Joe DiMaggio for Ted Williams.

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They began major league life together in 1993, both have tasted post-season experience and on Tuesday of this week the Colorado Rockies and the Florida Marlins found themselves leading their respective divisions on the same day for the first time in their joint histories.

Elias Sports Bureau found that it had never happened this late in the season. The Marlins and the Rockies, of course, would be more impressed with themselves if they were in first place at the end of the season.

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