I vacationed with my family in Rockport, Massachusetts all last week and it was very pleasant. I even managed to drive all the way back to Chicago in close quarters with my mother and one of my sisters with everyone staying friends, so it qualifies as one of my best family vacations in recent memory. For this reason also: When you go out to some sort of wholesome family activity in Colorado, all the little boys you see are wearing Broncos gear. On the beach in New England, all the kids wear Red Sox stuff, and somehow it seemed to me as if the proper order had been restored. Baseball is better than football.

Like many people of fine Boston Irish stock, I have about 45 first cousins, each one pale, freckled, and paranoid. Every single one of them does not feel as if the lead the Red Sox have in the AL East over the Yankees is safe.

You might have suspected that the reason the site has been quiet for so long is the stellar play of Willy Taveras. He's scoring two or three runs a game and starting to show up in the "FANTASY IMPACT" crawlers they run on ESPN sometimes. Willy Taveras, impact! I can't believe it. Well, sometimes it's more fun to be wrong than to be right, and I continue to insist that Taveras is a nonentity as a long-term asset and the Rockies should think seriously about shipping him out of town now when his value is as high as it ever will be. I understand that "baseball people" all feel like there is some kind of mysterious stigma attached to the leadoff role and those with the true pluck to fill it are rare indeed and worth keeping, but even so the Rockies already have an extra guy like that in Kaz Matsui.

I just found out in a hotel room in Ohio last night that the Cubs traded for Jason Kendall. Ha! Billy Beane does it again. As much as I moan about Willy T, the Katfish Kids have been rending their garments on the subject of Kendall for two full seasons now. I hope they are happy.

The Rockies still have to put together a winning road trip before I will believe that they are genuinely on the "playoff bubble," as the man says, but if you look at the standings in the NL West and for the wild card you have to admit that all things seem possible. For the first time in Bad Altitude history I am going to have to take a serious look at the competition for the National League playoffs after the All-Star Break and include the Rockies in it. That'll be a lark. I think I'll get to work on that after I get home to Boulder, however.

The research department and I are heading up to Milwaukee to see those first-place Brewers take on the Diamondbacks tonight. Go, second-half baseball!