Last week was the beginning of the baseball season so my mind has tended to wander in that direction of late. Really, though, there are few organizations that put as much stock in the idea of a digitized, commodified, and remote subjectivity than Major League Baseball.

Say what you will about their new media practices - from denying teams the ability to create their own websites, to cracking down on unofficial highlight reels posted to video sites - MLB has usually been one step ahead of the game. They seem to understand what's coming down the new media road and effectively build up their defenses to prevent their government sanctioned monopoly from some imagined threat.

It's no surprise then, that this organization which pioneered DRM strategies with their online video (to add another to the list) has been active in attempting to lock down the subjective product of the game of baseball.

As the players go out into the field and make their way through the nine innings, they are not only in the process of producing fan-turnout, wins, and other such affective quantities, they are producing data points. And in baseball, data points are a huge business. Everything from base running and pitching to weather and streak length are measured by amateurs and professionals alike. These data points are then used on cards, in fantasy leagues, or in home-brewed prediction engines.

These data points are the result of an individual's actions within a particular context - so we might safely say that they are the result of subjective interaction in multiple. Batter A would never have had that .350 average if it weren't for Pitcher B, after all.

So when MLB goes into one of its fits over who owns the historical records of game data and statistics like averages and percentages, what they are really expressing is their desire to enact a great degree of control over these indices of subjectivity. They have seen for some time now that value in a networked environment stem from the affective and subjective production of an individual or collection of individuals. So, like with past keen insights like predicting that the Web would take off, MLB is doing everything they can to get a firm grip before their customers or teams are able to take notice.