Rich Archbold: Billie Jean King loved tennis

When she was 11 years old, Billie Jean King, then Billie Jean Moffitt, fell in love with tennis.

The Long Beach native bought her first tennis racket for $8.29 and calmly, but precociously, told her mother that she was going to be the best tennis player in the world.

Billie Jean lived up to that stunning prediction.

She did, in fact, become the No. 1 tennis player in the world — and a sports legend and equal rights icon. Billie Jean was, and is, a pioneer in the women’s rights movement, an LGBTQ champion and a leading figure in the fight for pay equity for women. Long Beach’s former mayor, current Rep. Robert Garcia, called her “our most decorated hometown hero.”

But as a child growing up in the Wrigley District on the west side of Long Beach, Billie Jean had another love, which has stayed with her for all of her 79 years — reading.

“I just loved reading about history and famous people,” Billie Jean told me in a phone interview from her home in New York last week. “My family didn’t have enough money to buy a lot of books so I went to the library all the time to take books home and read them.”

Her neighborhood branch was the Bret Harte Neighborhood Library, 1595 W. Willow St.

She said she loved reading biographies about people, including famous athletes such as Jim Thorpe and Bob Mathias.

“And Althea Gibson was my first hero,” she said.

Gibson was the first Black tennis player to win a Grand Slam title, doing in the 1950s. His titleds included Wimbledon, the U.S. Open and the French Open.

Billie Jean said she also remembered reading biographies in “orange books” — those that had orange covers and contained biographies on famous people such as former President Ulysses S. Grant, Davy Crockett and former first lady Abigail Adams.

Billie Jean, a Poly High graduate, said she still can’t get over Long Beach naming the sparkling new 92,500-square-foot main library after her in 2019.

“That was a moment I’ll never forget,” she told me. “Having my name on it in the place where I grew up is one of the greatest honors of my lifetime.”

At the grand opening of the Billie Jean King Main Library on Sept. 21, 2019, the tennis great said the facility was a place “that is truly accessible to all and brought me feelings of such gratitude to the people of my hometown, without whom so much in my life would never have been possible.

“Long Beach provided me with amazing support throughout my youth, career and life, and I have always felt incredibly grateful,” she added. “Long Beach is a great city and a wonderful place to call home.”

Billie Jean will return to Long Beach on Sunday, Oct. 1, to receive the city’s Library Leadership Award at her namesake library, which will host the 20th annual Grapes Expectations dinner of the Long Beach Public Library Foundation. The dinner will be held for the first time at the library, outside.

(Receiving the Durnin Family Award award will be longtime Long Beach philanthropist and library supporter Skip Keesal.)

But back to sports.

In her interview with me, Billie Jean, a minority owner of the postseason-bound Dodgers, recalled that, when she was growing up in Long Beach, the first sports she started playing were basketball, baseball and football.

She switched to tennis, a “more ladylike sport,” after a friend suggested that she try it.

“What’s tennis?” asked Billie Jean at the time. She was a fifth-grader at Los Cerritos Elementary.

But after playing tennis at Silverado Park and other places, she got hooked on the sport.

“I discovered that playing shortstop in baseball, I touched the ball maybe six or seven times,” she said. “In tennis, I could hit 100 balls in five minutes.”

She also praised the teaching she received from Clyde Walker, who provided free tennis lessons at Houghton Park.

“I loved him,” she said. “He made tennis fun.”

When she was only 17, she won her first women’s doubles title at Wimbledon. In her career, she won 39 Grand Slam singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles.

Billie Jean said her parents, Bill Moffitt, a Long Beach firefighter, and Betty Jerman, were supportive parents.

“My parents raised two highly competitive athletes and yet they never cared whether we won or lost,” she said. “Instead, they encouraged us to do our best always.”

Billie Jean has a younger brother, Randy, who was a pitcher for the San Francisco Giants, the Houston Astros and the Toronto Blue Jays. He lives in Long Beach.

She said her mother named her Billie Jean after her father.

“My mother named me after him because he was serving his country in the Navy when I was born,” she said, “and my mother did not know if he would make it home alive.”

On Nov. 22, Billie Jean will turn 80.

And she’s still hitting tennis balls.

“I play two or three times a week with my wife, Ilana (Kloss),” she said. “My eyes are still sharp, but my legs are not so good.”

Billie Jean’s mind is also as sharp as ever.

She remembers when she decided years ago to make the world a better place.

“I decided that I wanted to help all people,” she said, “all human beings.”

In some ways, a statement she made about the Billie Jean King Main Library after it had been opened a year could apply to herself:

“What a difference the library is making in Long Beach,” she said. “I hope it continues to improve and enrich the lives of those in our community for years to come.”