J. Matthew “Matt” Rice has hardly followed a traditional path to the U.S. Supreme Court.

After toughing it out in minor league baseball, Rice aimed instead for the legal industry's Big Leagues, eventually landing at Williams & Connolly as an associate. Now he's set to join a new nine-member club: clerking for Justice Clarence Thomas when the high court's next term kicks off in October.

As an undergraduate at Western Kentucky University, Rice was drafted by the New York Yankees with the last pick of the 2010 draft—number 1,525 overall. He delayed his professional aspirations and returned to the Hilltoppers for his senior season, becoming his school's all-time leader in hits and runs-batted-in, and was a semifinalist for the Johnny Bench Award given to the nation's best collegiate catcher. His draft stock soared and he was drafted the next year number 300 overall by the Tampa Bay Rays.

For the next two years, he toiled away in Tampa's farm system for the Hudson Valley Renegades—whose mascot is a raccoon—and the Bowling Green Hot Rods, where Rice was named a Midwest League All-Star in 2012. While his play continued to improve, he never made it to Tropicana Field, where the Rays were in the midst of stringing together four consecutive 90-plus win seasons without him.

He then matriculated to Berkeley Law at the University of California, landed a clerkship with a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and caught the attention of former Thomas clerk John Yoo. In an interview posted on his alma mater's website, Rice credited Yoo's mentorship as helping him rise through the Supreme Court's farm system and onto Thomas' team.

“I played with an exemplary group of teammates throughout my baseball career,” Rice said in the interview. “During my clerkship [with Judge Sandra Ikuta of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit], our chambers developed a similar atmosphere. I have no doubt that a similar dynamic will be present in Justice Thomas' chambers.”

After Berkley, Rice landed at Williams & Connolly where he worked closely with the firm's partners in its Supreme Court and appellate litigation practice group. In 2019, he was part of a Williams & Connolly team that represented veterans groups—including the National Veterans Legal Services Program—in an amicus brief arguing that veterans were being harmed by the doctrine of Auer deference, in which courts are expected to defer agency interpretations unless they are plainly in error.

Thomas ultimately joined a concurring opinion critical of Auer, but Rice and his team fell short of knocking out the doctrine. The case, Kisor v. Wilkie, was decided in a five-justice majority opinion from a divided court this June, with Justice Elena Kagan writing that “Auer deference is sometimes appropriate and sometimes not.”

Williams & Connolly had no immediate comment on Rice's departure. Mitch Lukevics, Tampa Bay Rays director of minor league operations, said he was getting goosebumps thinking about Rice going to the Supreme Court.

“He was a good player; it's not like he had failure as a player at all,” Lukevics said. “It's very rare you get a young man to retire from professional baseball at such young in his career…probably he thought his mind would be better than his bat.”

He added, “Now he's in the Big Leagues! The Supreme Court!… He hit a home run, a grand slam.”

Bowling Green Hot Rods general manager and chief operating officer Eric Leach said Rice's former teammates were cheering the news.

“We are extremely proud of Matt and his success outside of the baseball world,” Leach said. “The position of catcher tends to be one of the more cerebral spots on the field. During Matt's time with the Hot Rods, you could see him exhibit the necessary traits for the position.”

Rice will hardly be the only big fan of the nation's pastime at the high court next term. Before his confirmation, Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a regular at Washington Nationals games and held an annual get-together with his clerks at the ballpark. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a native of the Bronx, is a die-hard Yankees fan who's been spotted in “Judge's Chambers,” a cheering section of Yankees right field slugger Aaron Judge at Yankees Stadium.

If Thomas and Rice end up at odds in chambers, it's unlikely they would have the chance to settle the matter athletically. Not long after joining the high court in 1991, Thomas played basketball with his clerks on the “highest court in the land” and promptly tore his Achilles tendon.