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September 20, 1973

Michael Ceraolo

A hustler in his mid-50s needed some real action:
golf games against businessmen
just weren’t cutting it anymore
He had been a world-class tennis player,
both as an amateur and a professional,
but that was twenty years in the past
And then he hit upon his best hustle:
challenge the top women tennis players,
and frame the challenge in a chauvinistic way
so that someone was bound to accept
It had worked back in the spring:
the first player to accept his challenge
he completely psyched out,
winning the match even before it started,
winning a nice purse for his trouble,
and
thus able to spout more chauvinistic nonsense
so the player he had wanted to play in the first place
would be compelled to accept his challenge

The stakes would be higher this time:
a much larger winner-take-all purse,
and
possibly the demise of the women’s pro tour
should a second top female player
lose to the aging hustler

The Lobber versus The Libber
and The Battle of the Sexes
were just two of pseudo-clever slogans
the hype machine had devised for the event:
Bobby and Billie Jean played their parts so well
that it seemed at times to be scripted,
though it wasn’t

The excess had created a spectacle
And on this night over thirty thousand fans
came to see a tennis court laid upon
the pretend grass of the Houston Astrodome,
while
ninety million viewers watched in prime time

Bobby and Billie Jean played their parts
right up to the start of the match:
Bobby decked out in advertising like a race-car driver,
surrounded by beautiful young women;
Billie Jean brought out on a litter
carried by six local athletes dressed as Egyptians;
giving each other gifts appropriate to their roles

The aging hustler’s attempted psyche-out didn’t work:
Billie Jean was the mentally tougher player
as well as the physically tougher player,
something apparent from the first point,
and she won the match in straight sets,
and won what she should have had all along:
respect

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