If you think the Maria Sharapova-Andy Roddick coupling is the biggest news of the week, you are wrong. Yes, it seems that the tall tennis duo have been dating for the past year – they did a good job of staying undercover by the way, must have very loyal friends. I thought something was up when I saw Sharapova in the stands for Roddick’s match in Los Angeles last week. But the biggest news by far belongs to Billie Jean King.
The USTA National Tennis Center in Queens, NY, the site of the US Open, will be renamed The Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. And that’s as it should be.
Hallelujah! The USTA National Tennis Center in Queens, NY, the site of the US Open, will be renamed The Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. And that’s as it should be. If you ask me for the name of the number one tennis player of all time, I’ll tell you it’s Billie Jean King. No player won so many slams and made such important contributions to social change. Billie Jean and Gladys Heldman started the first women’s tour, The Virginia Slims, and Billie Jean was a key figure in helping pass Title IX. Title IX, by the way, is not a sports regulation. For girls attending schools that receive federal funds, Title XI mandates equal opporunity in all areas of education, not just sports. The women of the WTA, the WNBA, and female college athletes in all sports should be bowing down.
Billie Jean won a huge symbolic victory for women by stepping in and beating Bobby Riggs at the Houston Astrodome in September 1973 after Margaret Court had lost a similar match to Riggs on Mother’s Day. Why would crowds turn up to watch a women’s tennis tour if a woman couldn’t beat a big-mouthed 55-year-old man?
The USTA is turning down millions of dollars of corporate money by not naming the National Tennis Center after a hot dog or a soft drink. More likely it would have been a cellphone company or, with things as they are today, an insurance company, but the USTA was upstanding enough to do the right thing and I applaud them for that. It was obvious that the USTA should name the center after Billie Jean but I was worried that they wouldn’t be brave enough. I’ve read letters to the editor complaining that Billie Jean would not be a good role model, a polite way of saying that a lesbian doesn’t qualify for high honors regardless of her contributions.
Bille Jean has had her problems. She mishandled being outed by Marilyn Barnett in a palimony suit in 1981 by running back to the arms of her husband, Larry King. She appeared on national television reaffirming their marriage and then crawled further into the closet by suggesting that they were considering adopting a child. I don’t condone that. She’d known for some time that she was a lesbian and gays and lesbians need every hero they can find. There is still no active male athlete in a major sport who is out and proud.
But I can’t imagine what it must have been like to be a lightning rod of controversy for the feminist movement and, unwillingly, for the gay and lesbian movement in the 1980’s. Earlier this year, a sportcaster on ESPN radio made up a fictional meeting with Amelie Mauresmo in the locker room that had Mauresmo asking the sportscaster to look under her tennis skirt to see the titanium racket she had strapped to her leg. If it’s like that in 2006, it must have been far worse in the 1980’s.
Billie Jean looks even bigger today when compared to Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan. Neither one has been willing to take the slightest political stand lest it offend a corprorate endorsement or worse, distract them from winning by having to deal with the least bit of controversy. They aren’t willing to pay the price.
Billie Jean has payed the price and now, thankfully, she is being paid back.