MLB to Podcasters: Stop Talking About Our Sport!

Oh, good grief:

At the request of Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Apple removed several baseball-related podcasts from iTunes on Wednesday. HardballTalk broke the news Wednesday morning when Aaron Gleeman, one of HBT’s lead writers, learned that his Minnesota Twins-related podcast known as “Gleeman and the Gleek” had been taken down by Apple. By midday, the list had grown to include another Twins-related podcast “Talk to Contact,” a Yankees-themed podcast on the site “It’s About The Money, Stupid,” and the Cubs-centered podcast on “Bleacher Nation,” among others. Awful Announcing catalogued the reaction on social media, which was swift, fierce and uniformly negative.

This strikes me as an instance of MLB failing to oversee its legal department.  I appreciate that MLB sent an open letter requesting that the affected podcasts be restored.  But as Wendy Thurm points out in her article (linked), their claim here is pretty much absurd to begin with.