In 1973, New York Times reporter Grace Lichtenstein was approached to write a book, A Long Way, Baby, about the fledgling women’s professional tour. It turned out to be a pivotal season in the sport’s history, and the book concludes with an in-person account of the famous Battle of the Sexes match between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.
The subtitle of the book is, “Behind the Scenes in Women’s Pro Tennis,” and Grace got to know the players–including Billie Jean–well enough to deliver exactly that. In our conversation, we talk about how the book came about, how it was received, and what press coverage was like for women’s tennis in 1973. We also discuss how Billie Jean King has changed in the last half-century, the difficulty of covering tennis in such an intimate way today, and what it would take to write a behind-the-scenes look at a contemporary player such as Serena Williams.
If you have any interest at all in tennis in the 1970s, you should read A Long Way, Baby. It is out of print, but used copies are readily available. You can also read it on the web at the Internet Archive.
Carl Bialik and I also discussed the book in Episode 112, and it was a key part of the research for my Tennis 128 essay on Rosie Casals.
Thanks for listening!
(Note: this episode is about 23 minutes long; in some browsers the audio player may display a different length. Sorry about that!)
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Music: Everyone Has Gone Home by texasradiofish (c) copyright 2020. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial (3.0) license. Ft: spinningmerkaba
