Remembering The Time Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor Saved Baseball From Using Replacement Players

A few months after the Yankees unveiled the “Judge’s Chambers” seating area in right field at Yankee Stadium as a celebration of Aaron Judge’s prolific power displays that included a 495-foot homer off Baltimore, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor was a special guest to watch the Yankees face the rival Boston Red Sox.

Sotomayor’s appearance in the unique seating occurred approximately eight years after she was nominated by then President Barack Obama and confirmed to replace David Souter.

Sotomayor’s appearance with other fans wearing “Judges Robes” also occurred nearly 22 1/2 years after she prevented baseball from taking a dubious step of starting the 1995 season with replacement players by issuing a preliminary injunction against Major League Baseball in the case of Silverman vs. MLB Player Relations Committee by that ruled in favor of the players and ended the 232-day strike and ordered the sport to resume while negotiations resumed.

The 25th anniversary of Sotomayor saving baseball from more disaster was Tuesday and the sport reached its apex in labor upheaval that had been at least three years in the making if not five years. Five years before Sotomayor’s notable ruling, owners locked out the players, causing the start of the season to be delayed by about a week.

The agreement expired in Dec. 1993 and by then former commissioner Fay Vincent had resigned after owners voted by an 18-9 margin to oust him in Sept. 1992. One of the notable supporters was then Texas Rangers owner George W. Bush, who at the time said to the New York Times:

“If anybody can find any winner in this mess, it’s my friend because he’s showed that among the rubble, there rose a dignified human being with a lot of class. He’s clearly the winner as far as I’m concerned.

“He knew some of us would stand by him until the bitter end, and I was fully prepared to do that. This is the wrong decision by baseball, but he took a loftier position. He said, ‘it’s not me, it’s the game.’”

In Vincent’s place came Bud Selig, the owner of the Milwaukee Brewers.

By 1994 owners wanted to instate a salary cap in a sport where in that season the average payroll was approximately $33 million and the highest payrolls belonged to the Atlanta Braves ($49 million) and the Yankees ($46 million).

All of this labor strife was unfolding as the sport was experiencing numerous positive storylines (the Baseball Network was not one of them) in its first season with six divisions.

After ending four years of losing, the Yankees were poised to return to the playoffs for the first time since 1981, the Expos acquired Pedro Martinez from the Dodgers had the best record in the sport, Matt Williams was on a pace to threaten Roger Maris’ then record of 61 homers while Tony Gwynn who flirted with batting .406 by hitting .394.

To demonstrate how well Gwynn was going, his average was never under .300 after any of the 110 games he appeared in 1994.

It also was a year when each division race featured no gap larger than 6 1/2 games and that included the AL West where the Texas Rangers led despite being 52-62.

None of this was played to completion (unless you count replays on Strat-O-Matic) and by Aug. 12, the strike was on.

It was ugly and by Sept. 14 the season was canceled, something that not even two World Wars could achieve and by Feb. 1995 the sides were in the White House with President Bill Clinton while trying to mediate a solution.

Nothing happened at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and shortly thereafter spring training began with replacement players who were there for various reasons and had varying degrees of previous experience.

Among the more notable former players were Dennis “Oil Can” Boyd, who had last pitched in 1991 for Montreal and Willie Hernandez, the 1984 AL MVP and AL CY Young Winner. And in that group included players like Kevin Millar, Rick Reed and Shane Spencer, who would eventually appear in World Series games for the Red Sox, Mets and Yankees respectively.

Anyone who participated regardless of experience were deemed strikebreakers by the player’s union and spring training games were played before small crowds, prompting former union head Donald Fehr to say then:

“It’s not the uniforms people come to watch. It’s the players. If you get rid of the best 800 players in the world and replace them, everybody notices.”

Once the sport was ordered to resume regular business, the sides agreed to a 144-game season and there were nine trades before the season started with Delino DeShields facing John Burkett as the first batter of the season on April 25 in an 8-7 win by the Los Angeles Dodgers in Miami.

One of the few owners not to participate was Baltimore’s Peter Angelos, who was a labor lawyer before getting into baseball. He described replacement baseball as a “sham” and believed it would destroy Cal Ripken’s consecutive games streak which would be broken on Sept. 6, 1995 in a moment that many believe is the turning point for baseball in terms of getting its fans back from the bitter feelings of the strike.

Eventually baseball found prosperity even though the late 1990s and early 2000s were plagued by steroid usage. It did not stop baseball from negotiating billion dollar television deals with Fox, leading to significant increases in revenue and salaries.

For the most part since Sotomayor’s ruling, the sport has experienced labor peace, though it came close to a strike in Aug. 2002. At the last second it was averted when the union agreed to changes in the luxury tax.

Since then the sides have quietly agreed to basic agreements in 2006, 2011 and 2016. The current one expires after the 2021 season and before the coronavirus pandemic halted the sports indefinitely, it seemed possible similar labor issues as 1994-95 could resurface again and the hope is the sport never has to face a judge again in order to get back to work.