FanHouse Supreme Court

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.

Civics quiz time: Who is the newest member of the U.S. Supreme Court? Go on, Google it - I'll wait.

If you found Sam Alito, you're absolutely right. (If you found Diana Ross, you need to refine your search terms.)

Anyway, Alito is relevant to our discussion not for any judicial action regarding the game of baseball, though that might not be so far away. Instead, Alito emerged from the dark hallways of the Supreme Court just long enough to throw out the first pitch in St. Petersburg today, and it was a laugh-a-minute affair:

Dressed in a green Devil Rays jersey instead of a black robe, the Supreme Court justice stood in the dugout Saturday, getting ready to throw out the first ball before Tampa Bay played his favorite team, the Philadelphia Phillies.

Asked what he would throw, Alito said, "A gyroball"-- a reference to a mysterious pitch that Boston Red Sox pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka has allegedly brought with him from Japan.

Devil Rays reliever Ruddy Lugo drew the assignment of catching Alito. The justice offered an opinion on how to frame the pitch.

"Make it look like a strike," Alito told Lugo.

See - it's all about framing the argument! It doesn't really matter if you're right, (i.e. if the pitch is actually a strike), as long as you rhetorically create the illusion of being right and win the support of the judge (ump). Make sense?

Wow ... it's like baseball and the law are the same thing! Now, if we could only reconcile a couple of legal discrepancies here ...