Didrikson, Mildred "Babe" 1911-1956

DIDRIKSON, MILDRED "BABE" 1911-1956

Track & field star

Greatest Woman Athlete

Most observers generally agree that Babe Didrikson Zaharias was the finest woman athlete of all time, which was exactly what she always wanted to be. There was nothing she could not do short of winning the Kentucky Derby (as one sportswriter said)—and the 1930s were only the beginning of her extraordinary, though tragically short, career. Born in Port Arthur, Texas, she earned the nickname "Babe" because as a schoolgirl she could hit home runs like Babe Ruth. She played on every sports team in high school and became a high-school basketball star. She played for an AAU-sanctioned insurance-company team in Dallas—the Golden Cyclones—and led the team to a national championship in 1931, while reaching the finals in 1930 and 1932 as well. She made all-American three times. Since few sportswriters followed women's sports, not many people knew about Babe at first.

One-Woman Team.

Didrikson competed for her company (she was a clerk-typist) in AAU track-and-field meets in Dallas and Jersey City. Her second-place finish in the 1930 broad jump beat a world record, and the next year she threw a baseball 296 feet. In 1932, at the AAU Nationals/Olympic tryouts in Evanston, Illinois, in about two and a half hours Babe won five events (shot put, javelin, long jump, baseball throw, and 80-meter hurdles, setting a world record in the hurdles and javelin); tied one (the high jump, another world record); and finished fourth in the discus. She won the title for her company single-handedly, scoring eight points higher than her nearest competition, a team of twenty-two women from the University of Illinois. People knew about Babe Didrikson now.

Olympic Hero

At the 1932 Olympics Didrikson won gold medals in the javelin and 80-meter hurdles, again breaking her own world record in both events. She might have won another gold medal in the high jump, but her "western roll" style of diving over the bar was ruled illegal, even though she had been using it all along. Although she broke her own world record of 5 feet, 5 inches, as did Jean Shiley (with whom she also tied at the qualifying matches in Evanston), Didrikson was awarded the silver and Shiley the gold. Babe was named American Woman Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in 1932, an honor she would win five more times in her career.

Professional

Because her name and picture were used for an automobile advertisement, the AAU suspended Babe in 1932. She turned professional. In the 1930s she played vaudeville, toured with the Babe Didrikson5s All-Americans basketball team, and pitched for the Philadelphia Athletics and the House of David team. The AAU soon reinstated her, to their own benefit, hers, and the public's.

Taking Up Golf

Though she always thought of herself as feminine, Didrikson experienced stereotypical comments due to her masculine physique. Furthermore, women's sports were only just beginning to be taken seriously. Having played all sports, Didrikson knew something about golf and often seriously considered taking up the sport. Sportswriter Grantland Rice always believed that Didrikson ("Grant's girl," she was sometimes called) could become great at golf, a sport in which she could compete with men one-on-one, as she had with Rice and his newspaper pals. She was winning amateur events in 1934 and 1935 but was again disqualified because of her prior professional status. She did a series of exhibitions with Gene Sarazen in 1936, waiting patiently for opportunities for professional women golfers. In the meantime, she married wrestler George Zaharias.

In the 1940s and 1950s she would win countless amateur and professional titles and help to found the Ladies' Professional Golf Association. She died of cancer at the age of forty-four.

Source:

Mildred Babe Zaharias and Harry Paxton, This Life I've Led: My Auto-biography (New York: Barnes, 1955).