MAJOR BLOGS - www.majorblogs.net - Boca Raton, FL - OPINION - While fans vote this weekend on what is the best ad for the Super Bowl, the best damn ad you'll never see is sitting here on the old hard drive, probably never to be published.

Twang Goes the Nerve 

Last month, during the Baseball Winter Meetings, I did an opinion piece called "218 Flavors of Vanilla," (MB, 12.11.06) which touches the story of the struggle between the independent-minded, highly profitable minor league baseball leagues and  Baseball Advanced Media (BAM), which wants to harness all of those millions of new baseball fans in regional markets to the Major League Baseball (MLB) marketing engine.

The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues ( Minor League Baseball, MiLB, or the "NA"), which is accustomed to conducting its business with all of the transparency of a secret ceremonial room in a frat house basement, was more than a bit tweaked by the piece.

Off With Their Ad!

There are a lot of ways that the overlords of the minors could express their displeasure with my editorial.  They could call and chew me a new one privately. They could take a public stance saying that I've got it all wrong.  Their solution? Ban our long-runnng ad in their annual media guide.

An MLN ad has appeared  in the Minor League Baseball Information Guide since 2001.

On January 8, 2007, we received an email from Ms. Noreen Brantner, who works in another division of their business that handles things like  the books and events:

"Advertising space is now available in the 2007 Minor League Baseball Information Guide and this is your opportunity to promote your products and services to every Minor League Baseball club and organization." 

We responded, and told them to reserve us a space for our ad, which was more of a reminder after meeting with them in Orlando in November. The next day, Steve Densa in the MiLB media office, dispatched this email:

"Thank you for advertising with us in the past. However, due to space constraints, we will not be able to grant your request to advertise in this year’s Minor League Baseball Information Guide."

Then, weeks later, on January 22nd, Ms. Brantner dropped us a line again, with the same hook:

"Advertising space is now available in the 2007 Minor League Baseball Information Guide and this is your opportunity to promote your products and services to every Minor League Baseball club and organization." 

Perhaps Densa just didn't know that they still needed ads. After all, he's on one side of the building, and Noreen is all the way over on the other side of the building. So we sent them the ad.  Back came Densa's reply:

"Noreen was not aware of the space constraints before she emailed you. As mentioned before, we will not be able to grant your request to advertise in this year’s Minor League Baseball Information Guide."

It was very clear that the NA isn't feeling the love for us. 

Of course, while we like them a lot, and are willing to hold hands without giggling, we're not publishing to be loved by them.

We think that the story of the conflict over whether team and league sites have to go with the MiLB.com site or maintain their independence is important to you, the fan. It affects how you get to view baseball and the coverage of the things that you enjoy about local professional sports.

Fido, with Typewriter 

An independent sports media does not only entertain.  We keep your hard-earned ticket dollars safe, give you a different take on what you see, and  keep the people honest who make a great living off of your attendance at games, purchase of television packages, and purchase of merchandise.

Only MLN breaks a lot of news that you need to know in this corner of the sports world.

The World Hockey Association announced that, even though it hadn't started its own operation, it would first build a minor league. Our investigative piece, "Hockey's Big Gamble" (SZ, 08.07.03), became one of the most talked-about articles in cities across North America as local media and readers alike wanted to find out more about this new organization riddled with curious question marks.

While we have praised great business owners like Ken Young (See: "Master of the Fan-Friendly Park," SZ, 05.07.03), we have held owners to task who have not treated the fans, players or markets well (See: "It Was in the Stars All Along", SZ, 01.09.04 ).

 O Brave New World

This is the new Journalism Lite: Rather than debate ideas in public, build your own 'news' outlet to put the proper marketing or idealogical spin on your news.  All of the look and feel of real reporting, with only half of the discomfort from all that annoying independence and accountability.

Major League Baseball's MLB.com site works within the realities of the existing large framework of  major league television, magazine, and newspaper outlets.  While MLB may not love a newspaper breaking the Balco Labs story, sending Barry Bones' career, along with the sport's reputation, to the bottom, they wouldn't dare put on the appearance of compromising a free press in the majors.  Dan Patrick might even devote a whole hour to that.

The minor league world is a very different story.  Up until 1999, when MLN publications began preparing for operation, there wasn't an SI or an ESPN® for our segment of the sports world.  In some ways, there were some in the MLB  side of the baseball biz who frowned a bit on the idea of touting their farm systems and their players in development, possibly fearing that it would extend the long and very expensive arms of agents and the Players' Association (PA) into areas where players were fairly cheap and plentiful.

Their opinion changed after watching the massive explosion of millions of new butts filling seats across minor league baseball over the last seven years.  People in Omaha may not make it to a Royals game, but they may buy a Major League Baseball TV package to see their players from the O-Royals make it to the big leagues.  They also buy gear to support both the major league and the minor league clubs that they follow.

The minor league baseball fan has eyeballs which MLB can monetize.

The NA launched the MinorLeagueBaseball.com site to try and deliver news and information to fill some of the same news gap which we recognized when we started our publications.  MiLB publishing had been very benign to other publications, even inviting MLN and others competing with them for reader attention to advertise in their media guide and on-line.

Then, two years ago, MLB.com extended its reach into the minors.  The stated goal was to improve the site, which, by all reckoning, had lots of flaws.  That retrofit was a good thing in terms of improving the information to the minor league fans available at that site.

What came with it, though, was some very tough politics that have been brewing in the background of minor league baseball for years, a struggle between the leagues and MLB over content, policy and  just how independent minor league baseball leagues entering the 21st century will really be. 

When the Albuquerue Isotopes can outseat the Marlins, and the Sacramento River Cats are a bigger draw on some nights than the Athletics, you might start to question how major is your major league?  The ground is shifting underneath MLB in a world where major league communities grow more tuned out, and minor league communities are filling stadiums with happy, paying customers.

Which Way, NA? 

The NA, which was founded in 1902 (See "Band of Brothers," SZ. 04.06.05 ), is the bridge between baseball worlds. It serves three masters:

• First, it is the umbrella organization that communicates between MLB and all of the minor leagues. 
  
• Second, it is the unified voice of  the minor leagues of baseball. The minor leagues are independent, in a very dependent sort of way, because MLB pays the freight on their player and field staff salaries. 
  
• Third, the NA operates to serve its own interests.  The MinorLeagueBaseball.com (MiLB.com) website is both an engine of news and a center of potential profit for an organization which recognizes control of content as an extension of its own power over the minor leagues that it stewards for major league baseball.
  

We believe that operating its own news outlet is also a huge conflict of interest. 

 See the News. BE the News.

MiLB and its member organizations are the news.  Owning a news outlet is equivalent to the White House setting up its own shop to tell you only what it likes you to hear.  Even the Rs had to get the big R, Rupert Murdoch, to set up Fox News, which is friendly, but still quite independent. 

A news source owning its own outlet creates the constant temptation to use its powers  as a news source to surpress or stifle the information given to the public by channeling only "official" flow through its own news bureau. 

To use the power of the association to squelch speech that questions that owned news outlet would seem to us to be an infringement of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which protects freedom of the press, even if it is the sports press.

 Conversation for Two

Freedom of the Press doesn't give us the right, though, to be irresponsible, or one-sided in our coverage of the NA or MiLB.com.

We have a responsibility to print opposing points of view. We tried to get one before the publication of the "Vanilla" editorial from them.  We were told that they were not interested.  After our ad was effectively banned, we called and emailed the media office at the NA to open a dialogue, but our calls and emails, other than the turn-downs on the ad, were ignored. This was typical of the overtures that we made:

"If there is coverage with which your organization takes issue, please feel free to contact me and I will put your alternative viewpoint on any situation into print," I wrote back to Mr. Densa. "If you feel our coverage has been unfair or not objective, we will be happy to feature your rebuttal to anything  that we have written in the appropriate commentary forum and make it available through our publications network. This is what a free, open, independent press does in the pursuit of the public interest in their coverage of a news source."

To date, we have not had the courtesy of a reply to that offer. The offer, though, remains open.

Stakes, Very Rare

What are Minor League Baseball's intentions to control the flow of news on the affiliated side of baseball?

It wasn't good news that, at the Winter Meetings, MiLB announced that a "back room" system would only be open to PR people from the clubs and to BAM, which runs MiLB.com.  By contrast, the MLB.com system called "pressbox" provides exceptional access to all media outlets of materials needed for them to do their jobs.  Rob Colamarino, the systems guru for MiLB said it would be "no problem" technically to allow other media outlets access to limited information, like photos or electronic media guides. So the problem is more political than technical. MiLB does not want to cede the power of its website to a level playing field with other indy outlets.

Oh yeah, we asked them for access to that service, for us and for all of the local media outlets nationwide.  They might have been a little peeved about that request, too...

Now You See It, Now You Don't 

Not publishing a vanity ad, even as nice as that one turned out, is just a little power tweak.  We'll spend the money with a league somewhere else.  What we worry about, though, is the symbolism of the act.

You have been getting the majority of your sports news on the minors through us, another indy outlet, your local team's media site, and MiLB.com. 

Those teams and leagues who have joined the MiLB system have seen a marked decrease in their ability to deliver news from a wide variety of sources to you, the baseball fan.   The Pacific Coast League site lost many of its cooler features and links to third-party content when it moved from being independently operated to the control of MiLB.com.

I love Lisa Winston's work, and I admire guys like Jon Mayo for cutting their teeth in our end of the business, but  the reality is that you turn a bit of a blind eye towards those things of which the people who sign your checks might take a dim view. Even if it was just self-censorship,  where reporters looking to someday make it to the MLB.com side of the business worry about what they might do to offend, the whole organization lends itself to being little more than the official and well-laid out cheerleaders of MiLB, even if Jon and Lisa don't waive those pom-poms on the podcasts.

MiLB  is not minor league baseball. The real minor league baseball is a collection of indepdently-operated  leagues whose business models, characters and flavors are very different. Honoring their strength and independence, which has yieleded one of the greatest growth stories in the history of the sports business is something that we at MLN do. 

We also worry that harnessing them to the great MLB engine may be strangling these geese that have laid such beautiful golden eggs.

Your Voice. 

When Delmon Young tosses a bat at an umpire, or an umpire strike sends in questionable people to call games, that affects your baseball world.  How can the NA, which controls the organization that pays for the allegedly-substandard umpire, or worries about damage control for a multi-million dollar athlete under contract to a major league baseball club, put out anything that approaches objective news? 

It would seem that we are on notice that if you practice independent journalism with which the NA disagrees, you may be subject to retribution rather than public discussion or civil disagreement.  While we would hope that this was the end of such passive-agressive behavior, we, and other companies who offer competitive product to MiLB.com on the web, have legitimate concerns about how and where the NA flexes its muscles.

Particularly in the game known as America's pastime, the NA should be a big brother to companies developing more ticket sales for their member clubs, not Big Brother.