Key Ruling Comes From Heart of a Fan : Baseball: District Judge Sotomayor confesses to lifelong love of the game before issuing injunction.

She used puns and waxed poetic. She confessed she was a fan. And then, with stern language and a piercing glare, she issued a ruling that might finally bring back baseball.

U.S. District Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who said she “would have liked more time to practice my swing,” came out swinging anyway Friday, telling the owners that they cheated in negotiations.

If anyone doubted the importance of events in her Manhattan courtroom, she erased them quickly and with a rather unique opening:

“I can’t help but to at least borrow some analogies from baseball as I start. The often leisurely game of baseball is filled with many small moments which catch a fan’s breath. There is, for example, that wonderful second when you see an outfielder backpedaling and jumping up to the wall and time stops for an instant as he jumps up and you finally figure out whether it’s a home run, a double or a single off the wall or an out.

“Unwillingly, I have been drafted onto the deck of this field with those of you watching out there, waiting for one of those small moments to happen. I personally would have liked more time to practice my swing.”

Then she got to the heart of the matter, demonstrating--with only four days’ preparation time--a detailed grasp of how the business of baseball works.

“This strike . . . has captivated the public’s attention, given the popularity of the sport,” she said. “It appears that any delay on my part . . . would halt the continuation of the negotiating process.”

She told lawyers for striking players and the owners that they could salvage the 1995 season and use the progress as a catalyst to reach a new labor agreement.

Then she scolded the owners’ lawyers, staring as she said the possibility of an agreement “will be greatly diminished if this season is lost because of the unfair labor practices of the owners.”

She said failing to issue the injunction sought by the National Labor Relations Board would irreparably harm players, who would endure “a harm that can’t be remedied.”

The 40-year-old judge, raised in a housing project three miles from Yankee Stadium, told the standing-room-only crowd she was not a dispassionate observer.

“I hope that none of you assumed on Monday that my lack of knowledge of any of the intimate details of your dispute meant that I was not a baseball fan,” she said.

“You can’t grow up in the Bronx without knowing about baseball, particularly from a family where their claim to fame is that every member of it has a different team that they have rooted for.”

Still, she apologized for her limited knowledge of baseball history, saying it was likely that “some purists will wince at my simplifying description.”

At one point, she referred to the “40-person roster,” known throughout baseball as the 40-man roster.

Other moments, she acknowledged the wide public interest by explaining the complexities of the case like a school teacher, starting sentences with, “For those in the audience who don’t understand . . . “ and “For the public . . . “

No one will accuse Sotomayor of failing to see her role in the history of baseball negotiations. It was the same court, in 1981, that failed to stop what became a 50-day strike when Judge Henry Werker denied a similar injunction request by the NLRB.