When the news hit this morning that President Barack Obama was about to nominate Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, sports fans around the country probably thought, "Why do I know that name?"The answer is because Sotomayor has gained a little bit of fame over the past decade and a half for her involvement in sports-related court decisions.
In 1995, she issued the injunction that ended the Major League Baseball players' strike hours before replacement players were to take the field in official regular-season games. And when Maurice Clarett challenged the NFL's draft-eligibility rules and tried to enter the 2004 draft, Sotomayor was part of a three-judge panel on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled against Clarett, and upheld the NFL's minimum age requirement.
