“You know,” she said, looking a little exasperated. And that was it. No more football for me.
My parents took advantage of the GI Bill to buy a tidy little one-story tract home on West 36th Street in the Wrigley Heights section of Long Beach. Every other house in the neighborhood was more or less the same, built from the same two or three basic sets of blueprints. My father proudly put his stamp on our place over the years, paneling some rooms, adding a garage, building a den with a fireplace. He planted rosebushes everywhere because my mother loved them so. Our swatch of lawn was immaculate.
By the age of four I was pestering my parents for a sibling. When I found out that my mother was pregnant, I seriously thought they were having a baby just for me. The day Randy was brought home from the hospital I kissed his pudgy cheeks and drank in his milky sweet, baby-powder smell. I couldn’t get enough of him. I thought, Finally, I have someone to share everything with! Now our household looked like something out of The Donna Reed Show, the classic 1950s TV program, complete with a working dad, a stay-at-home mom, two kids, and an adorable black-and-white spaniel named Bootsie, who my mother and grandfather had let me pick out at the dog shelter.
Randy and I were as close as could be as kids. It was Randy who gave me my family nickname, “Sis.” We walked to school together, played catch. When I began winning tennis tournaments he’d eagerly wait for me to get home and arrange my newest trophies on the shelf, then do a recount for me. The first time I took a tennis trip to the Midwest we cried our eyes out at the train station. After he declared his dream to be a pro athlete too, we’d practice signing our autographs in big florid strokes. We also liked to mimic our father’s colorful language—“Bust your bahoola!” we’d boom, bumping shoulders and dissolving into laughter—not always realizing until we were chided that some of Dad’s other expressions were too salty to repeat.
Before the 405 freeway came through Long Beach, our working-class neighborhood of Wrigley Heights literally sat on the wrong side of the railroad tracks that divided the city in two. Active oil derricks dotted the streets around us. Some remain to this day. Randy and I would ride our bikes to a trestle just a few blocks away and emerge on the other side in upscale Los Cerritos, where many of our schoolmates lived. We’d roll by the stately brick estates with manicured lawns and realize there was more out there in life than in the world we came from.
As the elder child, I had a head start on Randy when it came to our lifelong bond with Dad over sports. Dad would read the baseball box scores to me daily. By kindergarten I had already asked him for my own bat, which he made for me from a piece of scrap wood. I’d constantly pester him to watch me tear from my friend Molly’s tree just down the block to a tree in front of our house, a distance of about sixty yards. “Time me, Daddy! Time me!” I’d plead. Randy, then still waddling in diapers, would sometimes try to run with me. I vividly remember the gratitude I felt when Dad told the neighborhood boys there would be no more games on our front lawn unless they stopped refusing to let me play too.
I loved to rebound for Dad when he shot at our garage basketball hoop, and I could see why he was recruited after his Navy tour to play for St. Louis in the Basketball Association of America, one of the precursors to the NBA. Dad turned down that opportunity in order to raise our family. He could still make one hundred free throws in a row. I’d count each of his made baskets out loud as I passed the ball back to him, my excitement rising as his streak grew.
It was the postwar baby boom, and our neighborhood was crawling with children. I was always physically mature for my age and well coordinated. Once I held my own in softball games, my father’s coworkers always wanted me to play shortstop or third base on their teams at their fire department picnics. There, I learned an important lesson that applied later in life, in other contexts: Men and boys will accept you more easily when you excel at something they value.
When my parents took Randy and me to Los Angeles to watch our first Pacific Coast League baseball game between the L.A. Angels and the Hollywood Stars when I was nine I expected it to be a thrilling day—until I looked down on the field and it dawned on me for the first time that all the pro players were men. Before that day I had heard about the American Dream and thought it applied unconditionally to me. I believed that I could go as far in anything as my abilities would take me. I was a girl who loved to play ball and compete. I was as good at it as any boy my age, and while I had a growing sense that that somehow made me different, I disliked being called a tomboy or unladylike. I wasn’t trying to be a boy—I liked being a girl. Now I had smacked into a wall; it was the first time I realized that no matter how good I was, my life would be limited because I was female.
“What’s wrong, Sis?” my mom asked me on the car ride home.
I just kept staring out the backseat window, too upset to talk.
* * *
—
As a firefighter, Dad often worked twenty-four hours on and twenty-four hours off. When he came home from overnight duty at the firehouse he would start the coffee and make breakfast for Mom so she could sleep in a little. He’d do chores around the house without her asking. I still have some of the love notes my father never stopped writing to my mom over the years in his beautiful longhand script, calling her “Darling” and thanking her for being such a wonderful wife and mother. Mom was a terrific homemaker, and she loved hooking rugs, sewing many of the clothes I wore, baking special things for us. She was shy, but if she felt something was important to her children, she could get animated. Before my matches, she’d sometimes write me little notes of encouragement, reminding me about tactical points to keep in mind, then exhorting me, “Go get ’em, Tiger.”
My parents rarely went out for a night on the town and drank alcohol only on special occasions, when my mom might nurse a Grasshopper and my dad might sip on Scotch. They loved to listen to my dad’s records—jazz and big-band music were the soundtrack of my childhood. They loved Ella Fitzgerald—especially her scat singing on Ella in Berlin—Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Count Basie, Shirley Bassey, and the jazz trombonist Jack Teagarden. Sometimes my parents would roll up the living room rug at the pleading of Randy and me and entertain us by dancing a little together. My mom would even show off a bit. That was their idea of stepping out.
Some of Dad’s other habits, like our 8:30 a.m. Saturday bedroom inspections and the chores Randy and I had to do before we could go off to play, seemed a carryover from his Navy days. Suppertime was also sacred at the Moffitt house. We were expected to be at the kitchen table ready to say grace by 5:30 sharp. I can remember many a time when I’d be running and yelling at Randy over my shoulder, “C’mon! You know how Daddy is when we’re late!” We’d often talk at the dinner table about current events, maybe how the Dodgers were doing, then it was homework time. We went to bed early, though I often used that private time to indulge my love of reading—history, biographies, any kind of nonfiction fascinated me.
My mother was always frugal because she had to make things work in the household on my father’s salary. We weren’t among the first folks on our block to have a TV set, because my parents simply didn’t have the money. One of my first experiences watching television was a visit to our neighbors when I was nine to watch the 1953 coronation of Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. It was my first taste of the terrific pomp and ceremony that the Brits bring to so many things, including Wimbledon. I would be fortunate to be part of that in the years to come.
One of the greatest things my mom ever did for me was sit me down when I was ten and show me our family budget. I had no idea that every time I flipped on the light switch it cost something, or that every trip in the car cost money for gas. She wanted me to understand that if she or my dad didn’t want to buy us something they weren’t being uncaring—it was because we couldn’t afford it. We always had enough to eat, but we typically lived on tuna casseroles, meat loaf, canned veggies, an
d the occasional Sunday roast; we had margarine instead of butter. I can’t remember dining in a restaurant until I was eleven years old. Even then, Mom and Dad wouldn’t let us order a milkshake and fries with our burgers; we had to choose one or the other because of the cost. Even at home, it wasn’t uncommon for my father to remark, “Boy, you kids really eat a lot,” or for my mother to shoot us a disapproving look when we reached for another portion. To this day, going to a restaurant and having everyone order whatever they want secretly thrills me.
For Randy and me, the scrutiny created a conflicted relationship with food that has lasted our entire lives. If I got a little money as a kid, I’d go to the store and buy Three Musketeers bars as a treat. It was soothing to have the freedom to eat what I wanted. Once I began traveling for tennis as a teen without my parents, I started binging on ice cream and other treats and my weight began to rollercoaster. It has remained a struggle throughout my life.
My parents’ rules and views could be a challenge as I got older. They remained an inhibiting voice in my head long after I reached adulthood and left home. But I never questioned my parents’ love and devotion, and I yearned throughout my life to repay them in kind. I constantly strove never to disappoint them. I knew they wanted only the best for us.
Even as a girl, I could see how my parents’ values helped me navigate what life and tennis threw at me. They taught me delayed gratification at a very young age, and so I not only knew how to work and wait for what I wanted, but I had the faith and confidence that I could make my goals come true. I knew what it felt like to be challenged, unwelcome, or penalized for being different and how to push on anyway. I had empathy for people, but I was no pushover. I could stick up for myself. All of those traits helped me when I turned my ambition toward tennis.
From my first hitting session with Susan Williams, I knew that a country club membership was not available to a blue-collar girl like me. But that hurdle seemed less important by the time Susan and I met Clyde Walker in the summer of 1954. We sought him out because our softball coach, Val Halloran, who later coached us to the Long Beach city championship, told us there was “this nice man” giving free tennis instruction at Houghton Park. I soon learned that Southern California was a hotbed for tennis, and that public-park kids like us were fueling it. Before long, I was following Clyde each day to the other public parks in Long Beach where he taught during the week: Mondays at Silverado, Tuesdays at Houghton Park, Wednesdays at Somerset, Thursdays at Ramona, and Fridays at Recreation Park.
“You again?” Clyde would say, laughing when he saw me coming. But he always had a soft spot for me.
I was still among the tallest kids in my elementary school class photos then. Clyde asked me early on, “How old are you anyway? Fourteen?” I said, “No, sir. I turn eleven in November.” He seemed happily surprised. I could tell he was thinking, Whoa, we’ve got a live one here.
Clyde was a kind man, then in his late sixties, with thinning hair and a bulbous nose. He reminded me of Jimmy Durante, the gravel-voiced comedian. Clyde liked to jingle the change in his pockets, which always drove me crazy. But he loved us, and we loved him. His belief was important to me.
It wasn’t long before Clyde mentioned entering Susan and me in a tournament. One day soon after that I asked him, “Clyde, can you make me a champion?”
He said, “No, Billie Jean. But with hard work, you can.”
* * *
—
Inspired by Clyde’s words, I flung myself into working on my game. Whole lives are woven from thinner threads of hope than the assurance he gave me. I spent every spare moment hitting balls at home against the wooden fence that ran along the small slab of driveway in front of our garage. I don’t know how our long-suffering neighbors coped with the noise the ball made before that beat-up fence finally gave way and fell down—or how they felt after Dad replaced it with a cinderblock wall and my thumps in the night resumed. He put up a spotlight so I could keep hitting after dark. One more ball, one more ball, I’d tell myself.
When I quickly wore out my first racket, Clyde took me to a barrel of used ones at Houghton Park and pulled out a Spalding Pancho Gonzalez signature model. I loved that one too. Pancho was an early hero of mine. I cleaned the black-and-white frame every night. I painted the strings with clear nail polish, hoping it would help them last. I wrapped adhesive tape around the top of the racket’s wood frame to protect it from scuffing against the cement courts we played on.
The initial competition Clyde entered us in was a novice event at Long Beach City College over the 1954 Christmas holidays. I lost my match to Susan, 6–0, 6–0, but the lopsided score only motivated me more. Susan was a brilliant student and exceedingly gracious, but I think we initially became fast friends because she was a born all-around jock, same as me. She was the best tennis player in our Long Beach age group at the time, but, just the same, I didn’t like failing to win even a game from her. My first goal was to become better than she was, and I told my parents so.
As important as the extra effort I poured into my game was, my life might have turned out very differently without Clyde’s dedication and vision to complement my parents’ support. I was very lucky. He came to California from Tyler, Texas, where he had coached at some country clubs before he was hired by the Long Beach Parks and Recreation Department. At first, nobody in our city government supported his sizable aspirations for the junior tennis program. But Clyde convinced them. A decade before I showed up, he was already taking his pitch for a five-year plan and fund-raising to the local newspapers. “Who will be our Moses?” he asked, noting how tennis was a terrific lifetime sport for kids, how it could build civic pride, how Long Beach lagged behind surrounding Southern California towns in producing tennis standouts.
Clyde eventually teamed up with the Long Beach Tennis Patrons and Century Club, two community groups that shared his dream of making the city an incubator for future champions. They provided financial support that helped promising players like me travel to tournaments and stay in the game. At the time, even the $2 entry fees were tough for my folks to cover.
It helped, too, that Clyde had a magic touch with kids. He was patient, easygoing and nonjudgmental, which was fortunate for me because I knew absolutely nothing when I first turned up. Even following tennis’s scoring system for games and sets was a challenge for me at first: 15, 30, 40? “Shouldn’t it be 45, not 40?” I asked Clyde. “Love” means “zero”? Since when? Says who?
Clyde believed in finding ways for a child to succeed right away, which was also smart. He put us through drills that were more like games and kept us engaged the full ninety minutes. He stood behind newcomers like me and guided us through each stroke as we dropped the ball and swung through it. “This is a forehand…This is a backhand,” he’d say, as if he was letting us in on a magical secret. He believed in teaching the fundamentals first, starting with our groundstrokes. Unlike many of today’s coaches, it was a long time before Clyde finally let us hit (or “rally”) with each other. But I had an attacking game even then—I just didn’t know it was an actual style. It just fit my go-go-go personality.
As soon as we began a point I’d rush the net. Then I’d hear his voice:
“Billie Jean, please back up to the baseline.”
“But Clyde, I like it up here! It’s me! It’s more fun hitting the balls in the air.”
“I know, I know—that’s what we call a volley,” he said as I marched back to the backcourt. There was so much to learn.
* * *
—
Jerry Cromwell lived near Susan and me, and he was the only other kid who followed Clyde to the various courts five days a week after school. After Susan moved away because her father, a Shell Oil executive, was transferred to Denver, Jerry was my best friend. He was still small and a year behind me at Los Cerritos Elementary, but he’d been playing tennis longer and he was already good by age nine.
Clyde told us that ever since he started coaching he had been looking for a kid with a passion to play. In Jerry and me, he now had two. He said that Jerry and I were the first ones out of the hundreds, maybe thousands, that he had coached who loved tennis more than anything in the world, burned to be the best, and were willing to put in the work. That, of course, only made us double down even more. Jerry still jokes about how I somehow whipcracked and cajoled him into walking the three miles to school together one year to build our leg endurance for tennis.
After Clyde’s group sessions, Jerry and I would routinely stay on the court hitting. Clyde would often linger and coach us on more advanced strokes: half-volleys, volleys, overheads. He had us do crosscourt and down-the-line drills running back and forth across the baseline. Then, when it was too dark to continue, we’d pile into Clyde’s ’48 Chevy and he would take us home on the rare days when one of our parents couldn’t pick us up. Some nights Clyde would take us to his house first and his wife, Louise, would give us snacks or avocados picked fresh from their tree. Jerry grew to be six feet two and played some terrific tennis for the University of Southern California and various U.S. national teams. He could’ve turned pro. He was that good.
Like my father, Clyde rarely put limits on me. He started all junior players with underhand serves. But I could pound overheads very soon. As soon as Clyde taught me a proper serve, I began to add different spins. Then one day I watched Clyde teaching Jerry the American twist, a glorified topspin serve with a little side hop. It’s called a kick serve today.
“Clyde, can you teach me that too?” I asked.
“Girls don’t do the American twist,” Clyde said. The conventional thinking then was the stroke was too hard on a young girl’s body because she would have to throw the ball up behind her. Though I couldn’t articulate it this way at the time, I saw this as yet another cue to me as a girl to temper my ambition. It ranked right up there with similar thinking at the time that girls and women were so physically delicate we couldn’t play full-court basketball, run the longer races at the Olympics, or do a zillion other things because it might hurt our reproductive organs. We were actually told this.
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