In 1995, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor — then, at age 40, the youngest of the 38 federal judges in the Southern District of New York — helped rescue baseball from further ruin by issuing an injunction two days before the sport’s owners planned to open the season with replacement players. Sotomayor’s decision restored the status quo of baseball’s previous economic system and led the players to end their 7½-month strike, which had forced the
cancellation of the 1994 World Series.
“Some say that Judge Sotomayor saved baseball,”
President Barack Obama said when he nominated Sotomayor to the high court 14 years later.
Obama’s suggestion may be hyperbole, but there’s no denying Sotomayor’s part in saving the 1995 season and ushering in baseball’s longest period of labor peace since the formation of the players’ union in 1966.
“She had a major role in ending the strike,” said Dan Silverman, who, as regional director of the National Labor Relations Board’s New York office in 1995, filed the board’s petition for an injunction. “She understood the issues, she handled it brilliantly, and she did it in a timely fashion.”