The Supreme Court or The Hall of Fame?

Well, I'm sold.

WASHINGTON — Federal judges are rarely famous or widely celebrated. Yet during a brief period in 1995, Judge Sonia Sotomayor became revered, at least in those cities with major league baseball teams.

She ended a long baseball strike that year, briskly ruling against the owners in favor of the players.

The owners were trying to subvert the labor system, she said, and the strike had “placed the entire concept of collective bargaining on trial.”

After play resumed, The Philadelphia Inquirer wrote that by saving the season, Judge Sotomayor joined forever the ranks of Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Jackie Robinson and Ted Williams. The Chicago Sun-Times said she “delivered a wicked fastball” to baseball owners and emerged as one of the most inspiring figures in the history of the sport.

And it would be sweet revenge.

She had been nominated to the district court in 1992 by the first President Bush, but actually chosen for the seat by Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a Democrat, who had an arrangement with his Republican counterpart, Senator Alfonse M. D’Amato, to share district court judge selections in New York.

In 1997, Republican senators held up her nomination by President Bill Clinton to the appeals court for more than a year, because they believed that as a Hispanic appellate judge she would be a formidable candidate for the Supreme Court.

Of course, being pro-labor is probably a non-starter in these corporatist days.