Last week, after a reader directed us to Neil Best’s blog at Newsday, we ran an item about a minor feud between Major League Baseball and ESPN. To quickly recap in case you were away for the holiday: seems as if trigger-happy ESPN just couldn’t hold out on reporting those National League All-Star rosters, and revealed them on Baseball Tonight. This wouldn’t have been a big deal … if TBS hadn’t owned the exclusive rights to revealing the All-Star rosters. Oops.

ESPN’s punishment is that Baseball Tonight will have to stay in Bristol instead of being able to go live from the game Tuesday. The platform ESPN had built at the stadium for the show will now be used by photographers. A small slap on the wrist, but it’s significant in the big picture. Can you imagine if ESPN tried something like this with the NCAA tournament brackets? Or what might happen if ESPN held exclusive rights and somebody broke embargo? You know how everyone says ESPN is the most powerful brand in sports? We’re going to still go with the NFL and MLB.

It’s interesting how the media is covering this. Friday, the Hollywood Reporter of all places ran a massive story on the entanglement. Today on its website, USA Today features the story prominently, but when you click on the link, it’s just an Associated Press story. Sad? Kind of. Especially when you look and see the paper’s media columnist (under the banner SPORTS TELEVISION) has written about everything but this story. Weak. We’ve long chronicled the cozy relationship between the biggest paper in the country and ESPN, and this is yet another example.

No worries. Once Mushnick gets word of this, hopefully he’ll devour the story.

ESPN Shut out of All-Star Game (The Hollywood Reporter)