I have to admit that, at the end of September, it was difficult for me to think about anything besides baseball. The Nationals were first in their Division (no comments from Giants fans, please) and, at the last game of the season, I saw my first no-hitter.
Being thus preoccupied I, figured I had to find a way to turn my baseball thoughts into working thoughts.
Normally when I think of baseball and the law, I think of antitrust laws and famous cases such as the Black Sox Scandal in 1921.
But what else connects baseball and law?
I began to search the Library’s catalog for law titles pertaining strictly to baseball. Because, really, what true baseball fan can think of other sports come October? But was there even a subject heading for baseball in the K class schedule? Well, no. In fact, the only specific sports I found mentioned were Prizefighting, Horse Racing and Lotteries/Gambling.
So I limited my search to items in the Law Library’s collection using ‘baseball’ as a term appearing anywhere in the bibliographic record. Not the most brilliant search ever, but I did get 53 hits (which was more than what I thought would come up).
I diligently pulled all the volumes from the stacks and took them to my office for research.
And then – tragedy struck!
Not only did my beloved Washington Nationals not make it through the first round of the playoffs, but the Baltimore Orioles likewise fell short of their World Series goal (no comments from Royals fans either, thank you). My thoughts turned dark, and I began to wonder what was the point of writing a blog post now?
The books stayed in my office, taunting me, and eventually, with a deadline looming, I had to face up to my own personal nightmare. So I began to peruse the books – still somewhat bitter.
A dozen Congressional hearings – all about antitrust laws. No, not today.
Twenty-five or so treatises dealing with antitrust, one titled Courting the Yankees. Um, no thank you.
Another 10 volumes on case law. Yawn.
A biography of Justice Sonia Sotomayor? Interesting.
I flipped to the Table of Contents and there it was – “Chapter 4 Federal Judgeship: the Savior of Baseball“. How could I not be drawn in? I read that chapter and went on to the next. Pretty soon I’d read to the end and then went back to the start to see what I’d missed in the first three chapters.
When I finished the entire book, I looked at the remaining titles on the truck and knew I had my answer.
Not to my blog post quandary but to the age-old question about what to do during the off-season.
The answer? Return all those other books to the shelves and read through the Law Library’s collection of biographies on Justice Sotomayor.