Playing Ball with the Boys. Betsy Ross
during my updates: “The apparent terrorist attack on the United States.” Who in the world would have thought those words would come out of any of our mouths? Eventually, of course, games were suspended as the nation, and the world, tried to come to grips with this unspeakable tragedy. And that was the day that, for once, sports took a back seat to news at ESPN.
I didn’t know it at the time, but that day changed my life, as it did for so many people.
That day forced so many Americans to reassess their lives, their goals, their priorities. I was one of them. I had been at ESPN for nearly five years, had just signed a new contract, but I knew that my future wasn’t in Bristol. I was commuting every week from Cincinnati to Connecticut. I was tired of flying and knew that I needed to be closer to home to take care of my mother, who then was in her early eighties. So by the spring of 2002, I decided to come home to Cincinnati. It was time.
From that decision came Game Day Communications, a sports and entertainment public relations company I started with my business partner, Jackie Reau. I still stay in sports broadcasting through freelance work, play-by-play gigs, and radio interviews. But being at ESPN is every sports fan’s dream and one of the highlights of my career. Sure, I’ve heard and read stories about how the atmosphere there was not necessarily friendly to females, but I personally never felt it. I felt accepted as a sports anchor and welcomed to the ESPN family. I still have close friends from my Bristol days, and I am grateful to the folks there for the opportunity to be part of the best sports operation on the planet.
I’m fortunate that I can continue to make a living in the business of sports, something that might not have been possible ten or twenty years ago. It is because of the perseverance of so many women before me, that I can be in this profession. They put up with a lot, so that I could follow my passion. We who are reaping the benefits of their hard work owe them a great deal of thanks.
chapter 2
It All Started on a Tennis Court
“My life, since I’ve been twelve years old, is about equal rights and opportunities for both men and women, girls and boys.”
—Billie Jean King
For someone whose impact on society is huge, Billie Jean King is actually quite small.
In fact, she’s a five-feet-five dynamo who, at the same time, is wonderfully down to earth. That’s the first thing I noticed when I had the honor of interviewing her in May of 2010, in conjunction with Major League Baseball’s Civil Rights Beacon Awards. The annual event recognizes individuals whose lives are emblematic of the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement. Billie Jean King was receiving the Beacon of Change award for having an impact on society through words and actions, and I had the chance to interview her just moments before she went on the field to be honored.
Of course, her work in civil rights and equal rights has spanned her lifetime, not to mention her success on the tennis court. But for most of us, the seminal moment of Billie Jean’s career was September 20, 1973, the night of the “Battle of the Sexes” match with Bobby Riggs. That evening, on prime time television, she showed that a female athlete could win under pressure, facing a self-proclaimed “male chauvinist pig” who, just weeks before, had defeated the topranked female player, Margaret Court, in straight sets—on Mother’s Day, no less.
In her book, Pressure Is a Privilege, King talks about the Riggs match, which came a year after Title IX was passed, guaranteeing women and girls equal opportunities to play sports. Speaking about the match, she writes: “I wanted to make sure I understood every aspect of what I was getting myself into. I asked myself: Can I afford to lose this match? What are the consequences? The pros were simple: If I won, it might get the minds and hearts of Americans to begin to match up on issues of equality, and, I hoped, create real support for Title IX.”
Even famed sportswriter Frank Deford, in his Sports Illustrated article “Sometimes the Bear Eats You” (March 29, 2010) mentioned the magnitude of the King-Riggs match: “I was very fortunate to be covering tennis when Billie Jean King took the bull by the horns. Billie Jean more than anyone else raised my consciousness. Here she was, virtually running a sport, getting up at 6 a.m. after a night match to appear on Sunrise in Cincinnati or some other TV show, serving as a symbol for a whole movement, taking a lot of crap from people who didn’t appreciate her—and winning championships.
“I knew she would beat Bobby Riggs in their Battle of the Sexes in ’73,” Deford continued. “Only two or three times in my life have I been dead sure of an outcome in sport, and that time is at the top of the list. Apart from the fact that Billie Jean was simply a better player than Bobby was then, and immune to pressure, she was really a lot like him. They both knew how to work a crowd, only Bobby was in it for the con, Billie Jean for a cause.”
Billie Jean King
Frank Deford got it absolutely right. Let’s face it, both Riggs and Billie Jean had an agenda. Both were promoters: Riggs promoting himself in the twilight of his career, and Billie Jean, promoting her cause of equality. The match brought the issue of women’s rights into everyday conversation and advanced the cause. Would the progress of equal rights, especially in sports, grind to a halt if she had lost? Probably not, but progress may have been slowed. Good thing women didn’t have to find out.
That game, however, is just one event in Billie Jean King’s legacy of fighting for equal rights. She founded the Women’s Tennis Association, Women’s Sports Foundation, Women’s Sports magazine, and co-founded World TeamTennis. She won thirty-nine Grand Slam singles, doubles, and mixed doubles tennis titles, including a record twenty titles at Wimbledon.
She continues to be a champion of social change and equality, and her awards and honors are many: Received the Presidential Medal of Freedom; named one of the “100 Most Important Americans of the 20th Century” by Life magazine; named Global Mentor for Gender Equality by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO); received the NCAA President’s Gerald R. Ford Award in 2009, recognizing her contributions to improving higher education and intercollegiate athletics; and perhaps the most meaningful honor, in 2006, when the National Tennis Center, home of the U. S. Open, was renamed the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in honor of King’s contributions to tennis, sports, and society both on and off the court.
She has carried the cause of equal rights for decades, and because of her efforts, she received the Beacon Award from Major League Baseball in 2010, along with baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays and entertainer Harry Belafonte. Before the on-field ceremonies, I had the opportunity to interview her for Fox 19 Sports in Cincinnati. We talked about her work, her legacy, and her future, and I started by asking her about the Beacon Award from MLB:
“What it does for me is it reminds me of the responsibility I still have and also, it keeps that fire in the belly going, to focus on it and to thank the people before me and try to get the younger ones to carry the baton. I think those are the important things to do to keep all the generations working together, being very thankful for the people who sacrificed for us, before us, and for us to keep working.
“My life, since I’ve been twelve years old, is about equal rights and opportunities for both men and women, girls and boys. And I still have the same exact fire at sixty-six. So I’m going to keep going until my last breath, if I can help in any way to make a difference.
“I knew at twelve years old, when I had this epiphany about wanting to make a difference for equal rights and opportunities. I knew if I didn’t become number one, particularly as a woman, as a girl, that no one would ever listen to me. So that was a driving force to be number one, because it created an opportunity for me to be able to speak out and people might listen.
“It’s much harder for women, though. People don’t tend to listen to us as much as men. There are a lot of assumptions, so I knew I had to be at least number one, and then also, I knew that we had to make tennis professional. I even knew, at twelve years old, I wanted to be in a professional sport, and I really