How Sotomayor saved baseball

I'm a pretty big sports fan, and I follow baseball relatively closely (I can tell you, for example, that Zach Greinke of the Kansas City Royals currently boasts a 0.84 ERA over nine starts). So when President Barack Obama mentioned baseball yesterday in his speech introducing Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court, it caught my attention.

From the transcript of the announcement:

Born in the South Bronx, she was raised in a housing project not far from Yankee Stadium, making her a lifelong Yankee's fan. I hope this will not disqualify her -- (laughter) -- in the eyes of the New Englanders in the Senate. Some say that Judge Sotomayor saved baseball. (Laughter.)

Obama, who hails from Illinois, is a baseball fan and cheers for the White Sox.

And baseball fans should be grateful to her as well. Included in the White House biography of Sotomayor:

In 1995, for example, she issued an injunction against Major League Baseball owners, effectively ending a baseball strike that had become the longest work stoppage in professional sports history and had caused the cancellation of the World Series the previous fall. She was widely lauded for saving baseball. Claude Lewis of the Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that by saving the season, Judge Sotomayor joined "the ranks of Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams."

The New York Times' Sports Business blog says that "bestowing upon her Ruthian status (Babe, not Bader Ginsburg) is a bit hyperbolic." The blog went on to say, however, that "there is no doubt of the importance of her decision."

Donald Fehr, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association said that Sotomayor did not single-handedly stop the work stoppage, but gave owners and players time to get an agreement in place.

"If it hadn’t ended when she ended it, it would have gone on for some time and it would have gotten uglier and uglier," Fehr said.

So there is all of this talk about the effects of what she did. But what did she actually do?

From the Associated Press:

When the National Labor Relations Board went to court that March 27 seeking an injunction forcing owners to restore free agent bidding, salary arbitration and the anti-collusion provisions of an expired collective bargaining agreement, Sotomayor's name came out of the wheel.

For a good overview of salary arbitration see this post from Hardball Times. And colluding on salaries by the owners is pretty obvious -- they wanted to keep the salaries as low as possible.

"This strike has placed the entire concept of collective bargaining on trial," she said in her ruling.

She also was on the U.S. Court of Appeals during a notable case involving the National Football League. Maurice Clarett wanted to come out of college early to play in the NFL.

The NFL Players Union wanted to keep Clarett out of the NFL draft (under the NFL agreement, players must have been out of high school for three years before they can enter the NFL).

Peter King from Sports Illustrated wrote:

That's what unions do every day -- protect people in the union from those not in the union. Why is this case different?''

It wasn't. Clarett lost the case. He was drafted in the third round the next year by the Broncos in what turned out to be a ridiculously bad pick, a total waste by then Denver coach Mike Shanahan.

As a Kansas City Chiefs fan, the fact that the pick was a bust made me happy.