The U.S. Supreme Court Monday refused to hear an appeal of a ruling by the Eighth U.S. Court of Appeals in St. Louis that said Major League Baseball statistics are part of the public domain. Fantasy baseball fanatics around the world breathed a sigh of relief.

In his 2007 book “Fantasyland,” Wall Street Journal reporter Sam Walker observed that Major League Baseball executives once viewed fantasy baseball as a “benign nuisance.” What did it hurt that people competed to see whose collection of big league players amassed the best statistics?

The craze began in 1979 at a New York restaurant called Le Rotisserie; for the first few years of its existence, it was known as Rotisserie Baseball and existed mostly underground among the truly obsessed. You had to be truly obsessed to comb through box scores in the newspaper and keep track of them.

Then computers started making it easy. Firms started running Fantasy baseball stats operations, crunching numbers and regurgitating them. People actually were making money on baseball’s statistics. Baseball officials decided those numbers were their “intellectual property” and began demanding a piece of the pie.

In 2006, baseball brought suit against Charlie Wiegert and his pals in St. Louis. They had created a company called CBC Distribution. Major League Baseball Properties went after CBC in U.S. District Court here. U.S. District Judge Mary Ann Medler ruled against them, and so did the court of appeals. What was public knowledge in the newspapers and radio, the judges ruled, was public knowledge for everyone.

Baseball vowed to appeal to the Supreme Court. On Monday, the justices denied certiori, as they say around the clubhouse, meaning they wouldn’t hear the case. The appeals court ruling stands.

Here’s some interesting background from a court filing about the history of fantasy baseball and the arguments in the case.

I first wrote about this case two years ago, and wondered who was advising the knuckleheads who run baseball on their PR strategy. I’m not guilty of fantasy baseball, though some of my best friends are. I know a guy who was at the original Rotisserie League meeting, and he’s normal enough. Why would baseball antagonize these people?

They already get 50 bucks for a ticket and eight bucks for a beer, billions in broadcasting rights and gazillions in free publicity; why would they make it harder for their most obsessive fans to follow the game?