Chris points to an interesting article that discusses, among other things, ownership rights over baseball stats.
Facts are not subject to copyright because they do not owe origin to an act of authorship (see Feist) and I have a hard time buying the argument that statistics are anything other than facts. Of course, the MLB might have some protection in the creative arrangement of the facts, but this doesn't mean others can't use the underlying facts in non-infringing ways.
Ridiculous.