Corante's Dana Blankenhorn points to this CNet story on Major League Baseball playing hardball with Web portals, trying to get big bucks upfront for broadcast rights.

Dana writes:

Baseball is trying to treat streaming media players, like Real and Microsoft, the way it treats the broadcast networks. Sports leagues have long pushed broadcasters into taking losses on those rights, figuring that they capture key demographics (men 18-34), which they can then push into watching other shows on the same networks.

This is not the way the Internet works. The Internet is not publishing, and it's not broadcasting. The survivors in the Internet business have finally learned this, even those which, like Real, began life expecting it to recapitulate broadcast.

Dana may or may not be right, although I'd argue the Internet certainly IS publishing and to a lesser extent broadcasting in some sense. But either way, baseball has a big opportunity to exploit the web in a way that other sports don't.

It goes without saying that baseball has alienated millions of fans in myriad ways, but I'd argue a chief source of alienation is how few day games there are these days, particularly during the playoffs and World Series. Trying to build a fan base without being mindful of the time of day when kids want to and are able to watch is foolish. But as baseball has catered to TV for big bucks, it has made it difficult for younger fans to connect to the sport.

Because there are so many baseball games in a year, a robust offering of games online -- particularly if fans don't have to pay subscriptions to see their teams -- especially during the early to mid-afternoon when lots of workers and kids are at their computers could prove a big draw for baseball (for football, this isn't really an option).

Dana says he wouldn't watch a game on a small screen. But having a relatively unobtrusive window open in the corner of your screen while you work or while a kid does his homework would prove attractive to a lot of people.

Baseball should think of this not as a way to make bank up front, but as a way to connect with fans in a way that other sports can't. I'm not counting on the Selig braintrust to think of it that way, which is too bad -- for baseball and for fans.