Word is spreading online that MLB.com has decided to regulate its beat reporters’ Twitter usage to the tune of not allowing them to talk about anything other than baseball.

No movies, no food, no politics, no “damn I stubbed my toe,” no Justin Bieber — just the Great American Pastime they’re paid to cover at their jobs and nothing else.

NBC Sports’ Hardball Talk reports that the league is “ordering MLB.com writers to cease tweeting about all non-baseball topics and scolding players for their Twitter usage in general.”

And apart from a few Twitter-hating commenters, no one seems to think this is a good idea.

“This seems likely to do a lot more harm than good,” writes Mike Masnick of Techdirt. “It takes away many of the reasons why people like following certain reporters, and takes away the connections they build up with fans.”

Masnick says he follows Yankees MLB beat reporter Bryan Hoch because of his tendency to go delightfully off topic.

And he’s right. Who wants to follow mindless baseball-stat-jabbering automatons? Just as traditional media reporters, from Howard Cossell to Bob Costas, have made names for themselves and built reputation and loyal followings by being human, MLB.com writers should have the freedom to be themselves while crafting messages that will appeal to their readers.

No reason has been publicly given for this policy. It’s possible that MLB is following the NFL and NBA, both of which enforce Twitter guidelines on their players and officials. Twitter has been both a blessing (Shaquille O’Neal, John Daly) and a curse (Mike Bacsik, Larry Johnson) in the lives of pro athletes, but that’s another story.

This story involves reporters, and without the information, I can only speculate that maybe the MLB is worried about reporters using their own channels to break news and make comments via messages that haven’t passed through approved filters. My guess: MLB.com, like so many other large, brand-protective companies, wants to control its employees’ use of social media and doesn’t understand that this attitude is counterproductive.

Twitter is just another media channel. This would be like a sports league shutting down radio out of fear the broadcasters might say something offensive. (But that would never happen because radio makes money.)

But until MLB.com comes clean on this issue, it’s all just speculation. Let’s hope it’s not as Soviet as it sounds.