When the Colorado Rockies won 11 games in a row and 13 of 14 in 2007, the streak came in September and catapulted them into a tie for the National League wild-card spot in the playoffs. When they won a playoff game and their next seven games for a 21-of-22 stretch, the streak came in October and propelled them into the World Series.

Now, less than two years later, the Rockies have reeled off another 11-game winning streak and won 17 of 18 games. However, no playoff spot is immediately at stake, only the Rockies’ self-respect.

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This is a baseball fantasy. No, not fantasy baseball, that silly game that people play, gorging themselves on players’ statistics, the foolish game about which I have been interviewed for two different documentaries, the game I sometimes feel is played by everyone but me, but that makes me the rational one.

No, this is a baseball fantasy, something that never happened but about which I can fantasize and wish it had. It’s about Ted Sorensen, a man who could’ve been baseball commissioner, like Marlon Brando “coulda been a contenduh.”

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The most negative thing I can say about Donald Fehr is he made it easy for people who didn’t like him to criticize him. Take, for example, his very innocent interlude during a long day of negotiations in the middle of the 1994 baseball strike.

Hours after the day game of a bargaining session turned into a night game, Fehr appeared in the lobby of the Arrowwood conference center in Rye Brook, N.Y. , sat down at the house piano and began playing “Take Me out to the Ball Game.” He would later be criticized for doing something so trivial as playing the piano instead of remaining in the room and continuing to negotiate.

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