Major League Baseball has banned all of the MLB.com beat writers from posting anything on Twitter other than baseball-related information. They also have scolded players for posting non-baseball stuff.
As someone who follows several of the beat writers (Matthew Leach of the Cardinals, Jordan Bastian of the Blue Jays, Jane Lee of the Athletics, Bryan Hoch of the Yankees), I find this to be a lousy move by Major League Baseball. Jane, undoubtedly the most attractive beat writer in baseball, doesn't post anything besides Athletics news anyway, but the others all are engaging and interact with the fans via Twitter. This strikes me as a bunch of middle-aged white men in the MLB offices not really understanding what this Twitter thing is. Ironically, by limiting what their writers can Tweet about, MLB is actually putting their own website in a competitive disadvantage against other writers from other publications who interact with their readers and show us their personal side a little bit.
No doubt, Oakland's Brad Ziegler's Tweets on Arizona immigration laws, fan protests as the possibility of the Athletics moving probably was what caused this. And, of course, the old white suits overreacted. Let's hope this doesn't last.
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