Ashe bio reveals man behind the athlete

The other day, during a high-decibel TV sports debate over the president’s Twitter assaults on the integrity and intelligence of basketball superstar LeBron James, I heard one of the commentators equate James’ outspokenness on social issues and his commitment to public service to those of boxing icon Muhammad Ali. The commentator said he couldn’t think of anybody else in sports, past or present, who would serve as a comparable example.

If that’s really the case, then I recommend this talking head be among the very first to read “Arthur Ashe: A Life” (Simon & Schuster, 784 pp., ★★★g), Raymond Arsenault’s massively researched and thoroughly absorbing biography of the legendary African-American tennis champion whose activism on issues ranging from equal opportunity in America to apartheid in South Africa are as large a part of his legacy as his exploits on the court.

Here are five things we find out:

1. Skinny bookworms can become world-class athletes

Born in racially segregated Richmond, Virginia, Ashe showed an ability to serve a tennis ball as early as 11 years old, when he attended a tennis camp for talented black children in Lynchburg in the summer of 1954. “I was so tiny and skinny,” Ashe recalled later, “that the racket I brought from home looked almost as big as me.” By the time he was a teenager, Ashe “shot up in height and even put on a little weight” and was a rising star among the camp’s tennis prodigies. He eventually would reach 6-foot-1 and build enough wiry muscle to develop a devastating serve. One childhood trait never changed: his voracious appetite for reading, not just about tennis but about history and culture. He eventually would publish books of his own. But all that came later.

2. He was a very good – often great – player

Ashe didn’t dominate men’s tennis as Rod Laver, Pete Sampras and Roger Federer did in theirs. But of the 51 titles he collected, two stand out: the 1968 men’s singles win at the U.S. Open when he was a 25-year-old Army lieutenant, and the 1975 Wimbledon championship when he upset Jimmy Connors. He didn’t always win, but he often came close enough to win fans who were at the matches or watching on TV.

3. Off court, he was very good, often great – but not perfect

In public, Ashe was articulate, charming and composed. Yet he had the grace to admit feeling, in Arsenault’s words, “like a parvenu susceptible to money worship.” He also showed some unseemly chauvinism in 1973 when talking about equity in prize money for female players. (“Women’s Lib has been very trying.”) Yet years later he would regret such sentiments and ally himself with Billie Jean King and others in seeking gender equality.

4. He was fearless in taking a stand, no matter the reaction

When in the early 1970s Ashe decided to take on apartheid head-on by going to South Africa and compelling leaders to let him compete, he was criticized by those favoring boycotts and economic sanctions.

Such criticism came hardest from young black South African activists and their American counterparts. Ultimately, he would be disillusioned with “constructive engagement” with the ruling white minority and by the 1980s had joined those campaigning for boycotts, sanctions and divestment.

5. Not even terminal illness could keep him from the barricades

In 1988, Ashe learned that he had been infected with HIV through a blood transfusion when he was recovering from heart surgery five years earlier.

Yet in 1992, he took part in a demonstration at the White House protesting mistreatment of Haitian refugees by immigration and law enforcement officials.

Of the 2,000 participants, he was among 100 demonstrators arrested, though he weighed a gaunt 128 pounds. He would succumb to the disease, at age 49, a year later.