Ruth Bader Ginsburg once helped a girl join boys' tennis

Life is truly about the seemingly small things sometimes. Abbe Seldin found that out in a local-turned-outsize way in 1972 when a Rutgers law professor named Ruth Ginsburg took up her case.

Then 15, the New Jersey–based, high-school sophomore wanted to play on the tennis team. Small matter, no? No. This was pre–Title IX, and her school had only a boys' squad. Enter Ginsburg, who volunteered her time on behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), as New York Times sports scribe Andrew Keh notes.

As Keh puts it, "Stories like Seldin’s can feel like footnotes in the life of Ginsburg, who became the second woman to be named to the Supreme Court and built a towering legacy crusading for gender equality. Yet they are indicative of her operating philosophy, that true progress in any realm was best attained in small, purposeful steps, with every increment carrying real significance."

As to why Ginsburg took the case, on a pro bono basis and early in her career when it was tough just being a law-school faculty member as a woman in the United States, consider the words of Shana Knizhnik. For one, she co-authored a tome, Notorious R.B.G.: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Of Ginsburg, she shared this with Keh: "It speaks to this larger philosophy of hers that there was no case too small and no arbitrary distinction in how men and women were treated in any aspect of society that she didn’t feel should be challenged."

Keh's reporting includes a few notable twists in this story—some bright, others dark—and it's well worth a read. View it as a time capsule. View it as the sport of tennis having a glancing or adjacent effect in the lives of so many, from aspiring, wide-eyed wunderteens to inspiring judicial and human-rights icons.

By the by, Seldin is now 64, with two replaced knees—and she still plays tennis.