“Why did you do that without telling me?” I said.
“I guess it’s because I knew you’d yell at me?” Dick answered.
I had to laugh. It was his money, and soon he was telling everybody he had bought the team just to get a date—and Julie still didn’t go out with him. But he was a charming devil. Eventually, he did win her heart and they married.
* * *
—
I don’t know how we thought we could do it all, but womenSports magazine was born in the months following the Riggs match alongside the Women’s Sports Foundation and World TeamTennis. God bless Bobby Riggs.
Larry and I could’ve chosen an easier path than launching a glossy magazine from concept to newsstand in six months in the middle of a recession. Magazines are capital intensive, and the economy was shrinking along with advertising budgets. Not only would we need a bundle of start-up money from investors, but the costs of paper, ink, postage, and transportation were skyrocketing with inflation. One banker asked us, “You’ve worked too long and hard. Why risk everything on a magazine?”
We persisted anyway. Our marketing research showed that participation in sports among girls and women had increased 175 percent in the previous three years, compared to just 5 to 10 percent among males. We also learned that Sports Illustrated had at least 100,000 female readers despite devoting very few resources to covering women’s sports. There was definitely a market.
Our idea was to give women the same exposure that male athletes already enjoyed. When I was a kid, I never saw or heard of any women athletes beyond tennis and golf. Changing the paradigm drove me. We figured if readers, particularly young girls and boys, got to know female athletes through more in-depth coverage, it would go a long way toward normalizing and promoting the idea of women’s sports in the culture as a whole.
Larry and I were again able to quickly raise the start-up money from a variety of sources because I remained in demand. The pop singer Helen Reddy and her husband/manager, Jeff Wald, thought the magazine was a good fit for them. They introduced us to other investors, and we ended up with about $700,000. A lot of that came out of our own pockets because we didn’t want corporate control.
Larry and I had a tremendous amount of help from established magazine publishers, especially Pat Carbine and Gloria Steinem, who had gone the maverick route to start Ms. I had gotten to know them even better after I hired Pickwick, a public relations company that shared office space with Ms. in Midtown Manhattan. Pat Kingsley and Lois Smith, the partners at Pickwick, were the gold standard, representing entertainment superstars of the day including Robert Redford, Raquel Welch, and Mary Tyler Moore. Whenever I came by for a meeting with Pat and Lois, Peggy Seigal, or Gerry Johnson, I would often poke my head into the Ms. offices to say hello. Sometimes I would listen in on their story meetings, soaking up the process of how they put together an issue. I couldn’t wait to get started with our magazine.
As was often the case, Larry and I were learning another new business on the fly. Who knew you needed to buy a three-year supply of paper when you started publishing? Gloria and Pat were big supporters since our project was geared toward women’s empowerment, and so they opened the books of Ms. magazine and walked Jim Jorgensen, the business manager we hired, through details like print runs and ad base rates. Larry was the hands-on publisher. I wrote a first-person column and appeared on the masthead as a publisher, too.
We held our launch party in New York City at Gallaghers, an old-fashioned steak house known for drawing the likes of Joe DiMaggio and Joe Namath as well as a mix of local wiseguys, sportswriters, and horse racing touts. The choice of location was intentional. We aspired to be part of the big-time sports landscape.
We started womenSports with a print run of 115,000 and soon moved up to 200,000. We would later learn that only six of the seventy-seven magazines that launched along with us in 1974 survived. As a business, it was a roller-coaster ride for us as well, but as an editorial product, it gave us moments of great elation and pride. Our first iteration of womenSports was just what we hoped: progressive, creative, original, informative, edgy, empowering, irreverent, and fun. There was a monthly column from a male perspective called “A Pig’s Eye” and we playfully called our results scoreboard “Who Did What to Whom.” Our “Foremothers” feature celebrated women’s sports history, another long-neglected area. We devoted an entire issue to “The Revolution in Women’s Sports,” which included an action manual on how to fight schools that didn’t comply with Title IX. We covered everything from backpacking to basketball to women’s tackle football.
A glossy, mass-circulation sports magazine entirely devoted to women was unprecedented. Anne Lamott, now a celebrated author, was among our brilliant young hires. Another was the tennis player Tam O’Shaughnessy, who still talks about the parade of top women athletes who visited our offices and the camaraderie and sense of mission the staff shared, especially in the magazine’s early days. “We all felt like we were doing something important,” Tam said. “We’d go to lunch together. Play volleyball after work. Then go back to work and stay as late as we needed to. We came back in on weekends. It felt very exciting to be part of a first in history.” Tam went on to start a couple of businesses with the astronaut Sally Ride, a childhood friend of hers, including Sally Ride Science, which encouraged girls to get involved in math, science, and technology. I had known Sally since she was a terrific junior tennis player. Tam later thanked Larry and me “for showing us how to make a difference and how to be brave if you see something that isn’t right. You can make a difference.”
Many womenSports readers told us how inspirational, even galvanizing, it was to finally have a place where other athletes looked like them and faced the same challenges. They said we became an indispensable resource—sometimes the only resource—where girls and women could research which opportunities existed and learn what colleges and universities were offering athletic scholarships. One of those women was Shellie Pfohl, who became executive director of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition in 2010. She told me that as a young girl in rural Iowa she would run the length of her family’s long driveway to check the mailbox to see if her monthly womenSports issue had arrived, and then run back home once it did because she couldn’t wait to read what was inside.
Stories like that were what we were hoping for with all the projects we did. I always say I want things to be better fifty years from now, one hundred years from now. I want to create change that lasts.
Chapter 21
So much happened in the months immediately before and after I played Bobby Riggs, I remember laughing and telling someone once, “Do you know how much more exciting my life became in the ’70s?” Several weeks before the Riggs match, Jerry Perenchio invited me to a large dinner party that was held in Los Angeles. I asked, “Who’s the party for?” Jerry said casually, “Oh, it’s for Elton John.”
Elton was my favorite recording artist in the early 1970s. The first time I heard him sing the ballad “Your Song” over my car radio, I had to pull over on a busy San Francisco street to listen to it. I loved his voice and keyboard playing. I couldn’t believe how poignant the song was, how much it moved me. I bought Tumbleweed Connection, Madman Across the Water, and all his other records. What I didn’t know before Jerry invited me to the dinner party was that Elton was a tennis fanatic, and he was a big fan of mine.
The thing I remember most about that night is that Elton and I were seated at opposite ends of a large room, and Tony King, Elton’s manager, came over to me as the plates were being cleared and said, “This is ridiculous. Elton’s been dying to meet you all night, but he’s too shy.” I said, “Ditto.” Tony said, “Come with me,” and led me to a seat across from Elton and introduced us. We only had a chance to chat for a few minutes, but as we parted Elton said, “When are you coming to London?”
I had already gotten a big taste of t
he Los Angeles celebrity swirl by then—“Have your people call my people, kiss, kiss! Seriously, you look great!”—and I wasn’t sure if he really meant that he might want to get together.
Fast-forward to Wimbledon, late June 1974. When I checked into the Gloucester Hotel, the desk clerk handed me a note: “Billie—Call me—Elton.” When I dialed the number, Elton picked up and offered to come by. For privacy, he suggested I meet him outside in his car, which turned out to be a shiny new Rolls-Royce Phantom VI limo. “Would you like to listen to some music?” he said after I got into the cavernous back seat. “I’ve got thirty-six speakers.” This I had to hear. Elton cued up some tunes, and we sat there for hours, listening and talking.
Elton and I quickly developed a sweet rapport that night. We discussed how music and sports are great levelers that can bring everyone together regardless of their race, gender, or social caste. I told Elton how much I loved his music. He told me he had watched the Battle of the Sexes match in a hotel room in Los Angeles. “When I saw you come out on that litter thing, I thought, ‘Wow! She’s copying me!’ ” he teased.
The more we talked, the more we found we had in common. We were both working-class kids at the peak of our fame and we weren’t sure how to handle it. We both carried secrets about our sexuality, though we didn’t discuss it that night. We were both riven with contradictions—introverts who nonetheless wanted people around us. As shy as we were, we felt most alive onstage.
Once Wimbledon started, Elton came to see me again, and played tennis with Larry at the Queen’s Club, which was then the official practice site for the tournament. Elton came back on the day I played in the quarterfinals against eighth-seeded Olga Morozova, the Soviet Union’s top player, and I was knocked out in straight sets. The loss not only killed me, it also left Elton convinced he was bad luck; he never came to see me play at Wimbledon again. It was the first time I had lost before the semifinals there since 1962, a streak of twelve years.
Hoping to cheer me up that night, Elton insisted on taking me out on the town. First, Italian food at our favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Wimbledon village. Next, a working-class pub in Brixton where I saw my first drag show and we stood at a bar that was four deep with customers. I drank soda and Elton drank beer and led us all in sing-alongs. From there, it was on to an infamous members-only nightclub called Tramp, where we walked down a flight of stairs, made a couple of turns, and—is this really happening?—Mick Jagger and his wife, Bianca, were waiting for us at a back table. There was a dance floor at Tramp as well as a posh dining area, and the club was known for attracting celebrity musicians, actors, even royals. One night when we were not there, Keith Moon of the Who swung from a chandelier until it came crashing down. Such things happened at Tramp a lot.
(On another visit to London, Martina and I went to see Elton perform at Wembley Stadium. Afterward, back at the hotel, he offhandedly mentioned, “Oh, some friends might be coming by in a bit.” I thought nothing of it until there was a knock on the door, Elton opened it, and there stood Paul McCartney, his wife, Linda, and their baby daughter, Stella.
“Hi,” Paul said casually as they walked in.
A couple of minutes after that, Harry Nilsson and Dino Martin arrived.)
Elton and I bonded for life on that first visit. Forty years later, we’re still like a pair of nomads who constantly fly off in different directions but always find each other again. When we were both in the States late in July 1974, Elton agreed to play a celebrity match for us in Philadelphia. It was a favor to our World TeamTennis team, and a dream come true for a tennis nut like him. I asked Ted Tinling to fit Elton for a Freedoms uniform and Elton loved it. We were playing Toronto and our crowds had been lagging at the Spectrum, but almost ten thousand fans turned out that night, mainly to watch Elton play (and beat) Bill Cosby, a Philly native.
Elton was also in town to play a concert at the arena. On the way to the Spectrum that night, he turned and said to me, “I want to write a song for you.”
“C’mon,” I laughed, thinking, I didn’t just hear that.
I only realized he was serious when he added, “What should we call it? How about Philadelphia Freedom?”
“That would be a great gift to the people of Philadelphia,” I told him.
The next time I saw Elton, I was in Denver about a month later to play another World TeamTennis match and he was recording his latest album at a studio outside the city. When I went out to warm up, he was sitting in a courtside seat wearing his Freedoms shirt. He said he had something he wanted me to hear, so I took him back to our team locker room. He was carrying a small tape deck and smiled at me as he set it down and hit Play.
I used to be a rolling stone, you know
If a cause was right…
As soon as I heard Elton singing those first two lines after the trilling flutes and opening horns and strings of “Philadelphia Freedom” I was awestruck. So was our entire team. I still think it’s unbelievable. He looked relieved and told us, “Oh, I was hoping you would love it.” He added that every time he belted out each syllable of “PHIL-A-DEL-PHI-A” in the refrain, he imagined me stomping around and yelling at a chair umpire. That made me laugh. The song is a wonderful, completely original work by Elton and his amazing longtime lyricist, Bernie Taupin, that they styled as a tribute to the Philadelphia soul sound. The tune became a source of pride for the city as well as Elton’s first hit to cross over to No. 1 on the R&B charts, which was doubly rewarding for him.
Elton sat with us on the team bench that night in Denver. Later that year, he gave me my first of several chances to experience his rock ‘n’ roll life onstage. He had a concert at the Spectrum. We were sitting in his dressing room beforehand and he said he wanted me to be one of his backup vocalists that night. “That’s not happening,” I said. When it was time for him to walk out onstage, I took off running down a hallway and a bodyguard was sent to chase me down. The man literally dragged me back to Elton, who then lifted me in his arms and carried me out, kicking and screaming.
The crowd screamed and cheered, thinking it was all part of the act.
* * *
—
I was never crazy about the “Old Lady” nickname that Rosie jokingly hung on me in my early twenties, even though I laughed and played along. By 1974, I was starting to feel younger players like Chrissie, Evonne, and Martina gaining on me. I was nearly thirty-one, my knees were again killing me, and I couldn’t run and jump like I had before. As an elite athlete, you’re always poignantly aware that your run has to end sometime.
I had always mentored up-and-coming players or invited them to practice with me, just as others had been kind enough to do for me. I knew we had to prepare our next generation to keep the momentum rolling. Chrissie still jokes about the day I told her that I wanted her to succeed me as WTA president, so she needed to start preparing right away—at age nineteen—by serving as vice president that year. She gulped and said, “Me? Why me?”
“Because you’re our superstar,” I said. “It’s easier for the star players to lead because the media will listen to you.” I assured her that the other veterans and I would help her, plus she had the WTA and Slims support staff to call on. The next year, Chrissie succeeded me as president and served a total of eleven years over two stints, doing a terrific job. She put in the work, informed herself about the issues we faced, and was an articulate spokeswoman for the tour.
Passing the WTA presidency to Chrissie was more proof that my role in the game was changing. Another sign was that at both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open in 1974, the tennis world was fixated on the Jimmy Connors and Chrissie soap opera.
It made total sense that Jimmy and Chrissie would find each other. They were both public-park kids from middle-class Catholic families who were raised to be tennis champions. Jimmy’s colorful mother, Gloria, was a gifted amateur who had twice played at Forest Hills as a teenag
er before she became Jimmy’s hard-driving coach. (When Jimmy debuted at Wimbledon in a 1972 match, Gloria had to be asked to stop shouting, “Kick him in the slats, Jimbo! Whoo hoo!”) As a young woman, Gloria was courted by Pancho Segura and asked on a date by Jimmy Evert, Chrissie’s father, before he met his wife, Colette. Gloria Connors coached stars like Mickey Rooney and Errol Flynn after leaving Illinois and settling in Los Angeles. The Connors and Evert kids naturally ran into each other over the years on the junior tennis circuit.
Jimmy is three years older than Chrissie, and they didn’t start dating until 1972, when she was seventeen. At the time, they were still both traveling with their mothers. The tabloids were onto their romance from the beginning. I mean, how could they resist? It was made to look like a classic case of the good girl falling for the incorrigible bad boy. By 1974, they were engaged and headed toward the finals at Wimbledon. But even then, Chrissie was having second thoughts. Her reservations hadn’t gone away by the time we arrived at the U.S. Open at Forest Hills.
One day as we were both sitting in the locker room, Chrissie asked me how it was being married and having a tennis career.
“I think you have to be a full person,” I told her. “I was young to be married at twenty-one. But a woman was expected to get married back then. I was the last among my friends to marry. I really wanted to get married. We had dated for two years.”
Chrissie was the first to admit that she had led a sheltered life. She was clearly struggling. I asked gently, “Do you love Jimmy?”
She sighed and said, “Yes, yes. It’s not that.”
Tennis meant so much to Chrissie, and she knew that she would be the one pressured to give up her career. Even Jimmy had suggested as much. She and Jimmy had both gone on to win Wimbledon, which only highlighted how realistic their individual tennis ambitions were.
All In Page 31