Interesting week upcoming with some news all over the place ...

BALCO comes back to the news with a couple different venues bubbling. Greg Anderson (Barry Bonds' trainer) has an evidentiary hearing to question the search of both BALCO and his residence. There's some questions about this (addressed extremely well in The Juice). If the search and Conte's statements are allowed in, there's almost no defense. That said, Rick Collins was quoted in ESPN as saying the penalties should be minor and that we should anticipate plea bargains. There's lots of speculation that Conte already has a deal, something I believe is the case. (Collins is not a disinterested party in this, though not yet directly involved.)

Baseball hopes that this gets swept away in layers of proceedings and legal mumbo-jumbo. If you heard this week's BPR, you'll know it will do little to solve the real problem.

BALCO also will be involved in the Tim Montgomery hearing. It's unclear whether there's actually a positive test in Montgomery's pending suspension. That's punk. I'm all for suspensions once there's a positive result and a known procedure. This type of thing is star chamber quality.

If it all breaks right, the PR will be good for sport, bad for justice, and worse for fixing the problem. Where it could get interesting is if this spirals a bit or if any of the parties to the BALCO case get a bit chatty after a decision. We know that Conte is working on a book and that Fainaru-Wada has one coming in the spring. It could get chatty between now and then, especially if the REAL parties like Conte and others are called before Congress.

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The draft starts Tuesday and while it's not on TV, it is on MLB.tv. That's a start. MLB's doing it's bit to publicize something I think is easy. It won't be huge or even good drama like the NFL or NBA draft, but who thought those would be big?

I participated in John Sickel's mock draft today and it reminded me just how much of a monopoly Baseball America has on this. Everyone basically followed their lists, spouted their commentary, and knew nothing beyond what their "scouting service" told them. This is to be expected, I guess, and I'm not faulting the people that participated.

Luckily, BA is a "good" monopoly and generally is right on top of this. I know no one is better connected and at this time of the year, they're as manic as anyone. I wonder if MLB could put up more scouting (actual scouting bureau reports?) and more video of the top players. ESPN could do the same thing, I guess, but has showed little interest.

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I got a couple emails telling me that Jim Tracy had "The Juice" on his desk during a pre-game interview. That's pretty cool.

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Whoa.