Forty-four years after Billie Jean King slammed Bobby Riggs in the gimmicky tennis match dramatized by the movie Battle of the Sexes, the battle endures. In tennis, at least, women play for the same prize money as men in major tournaments, but men overwhelmingly dominate the attention and the revenue in most professional sports.
Did anybody notice that the WNBA Finals came down to a Game 5 thriller last week — the Minnesota Lynx staving off a frantic last-minute rally by the L.A. Sparks — while the Dodgers were heading for the baseball playoffs and the football season was in full swing?
There is a women’s basketball team that does command substantial respect every four years. It is Team USA, which has won gold medals at six consecutive Olympic Games dating back to 1996. The national team’s preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Games began with a three-day training camp two weeks ago at Westmont College and UCSB.