Obama's Supreme Court Pick Has Baseball Past

I was sitting at my desk at work with Bloomberg TV running in the background. I heard breaking news that President Barack Obama was going to name Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee for the Supreme Court. Why do baseball fans care about Sonia Sotomayor? Well not only did she grow up in a Bronx housing project just three miles from Yankee Stadium, and not only does she supposedly slip off to the ballpark once in a while to catch an afternoon game, but, as the New York Times wrote in 1995, on March 31st, 1995, after a strike had cancelled the World Series the previous year, she had "the fate of major league baseball thrust upon her."

And as the New York Times wrote recently, she became revered for her role in ending the player's strike by ruling against the owners and in favor of the players, saying that the owners were trying to subvert the labor system. They declared her a "baseball savior", with The Philadelphia Inquirer saying that she had joined "the ranks of Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams" and the Chicago Sun-Times saying she had emerged as one of the most inspiring figures in the history of the sport.

Although many have forgotten her role in ending the player's strike, her 15 minutes of fame (which was actually how long she took to issue an injunction that broke the deadlock in the baseball strike) have not been forgotten by all. Let's hope that there are bigger issues for her to tackle in the Supreme Court, but for one day in 1995, Sotomayor helped save the game that I love.