Would you rather be Martina Navratilova or Billie Jean King?

[MrScorpio]

How would you get your Tennis on?

[Bertha Venation]

1. I'd be Billie Jean King

A class act.

[gratuitous]

2. Jillie Bean, no doubt

Very cool story from the 1970s. My journalism teacher was working on her master's thesis. Back in those days, folks doing those things quoted from these items called "books" and supported their research with a "bibliography," going to places called "libraries" to read the "books" as well as other items compiled under the rubric of "periodicals."

Anyway, her topic was women in sports, and she wanted to quote something that Billie Jean King had been quoted as saying in a book that had been written the year before. Being a good student (as well as a pretty good teacher), she decided to call the book's publisher to verify the quote and to request formal permission for citing it in her thesis. She left a message from her west coast home at the east coast publisher. She sort of forgot about it, when her home phone rang the next Saturday morning, around 7 a.m. Since wonderful news is always conveyed at 7 a.m. on Saturday, she regarded the ringing phone with all the anticipation of picking up a live rattlesnake.

She answered, and the voice on the other end said, "May I speak to {teacher's full name}, please?" Nobody called her by her full name, and it pretty much confirmed that the next thing she was going to hear was that someone had died in a horrible car accident or something. "This is she." "This is Billie Jean King, I'm returning your call."

She practically dropped her coffee cup, scrambled to get her notepad and a pen, and spent more than half an hour verifying Billie Jean's quote, explaining to her what her paper was about, and getting oodles of material for her thesis.