Didrikson, Mildred "Babe" 1911-1956

American Decades

DIDRIKSON, MILDRED "BABE" 1911-1956

Olympic medalist, golfer

Babe

As a young girl, Mildred Didrikson was such a powerful home run hitter on the baseball field that her friends nicknamed her "Babe," after Babe Ruth. The name stuck. Didrikson grew up near Port Arthur, Texas, and showed her athletic talent early. A high-school all-American basketball star, Didrikson went on to play in an industrial athletic league, leading her team to two finals and a national championship. She once scored 106 points in a basketball game. Didrikson then turned to track and qualified for the United States team at the 1932 Olympics. Described variously in the press as Whatta-Gal Didrikson, the Texas Tornado, and the Terrific Tomboy, she won gold medals in the javelin, with a world-record throw, and the 80-meter hurdles, in which she set a U.S. outdoor record time. She tied the winner in the high jump but was given a second-place silver medal because of her unconventional style. At the 1932 Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) championships, she entered eight of ten events and won five.

Rounded Athlete

In the 1930s there was no competitive setting in which a woman athlete could earn a living. Didrikson was suspended from the AAU in 1932 for allegedly appearing in a Chrysler Corporation advertisement, and she decided to turn professional. She toured with a mixed-gender basketball team called Babe Didrikson's All Americans and pitched at major league baseball spring-training games in 1934. She earned $1,500 a month and played some four hundred games with a male baseball team called the House of David. She once struck out New York Yankee great Joe DiMaggio. Sportswriter Grantland Rice described her as "the most flawless specimen of muscle harmony, of complete mental and physical coordination the world of sport has ever known"; in his opinion she was the greatest athlete of either sex in the history of American sports.

Golf

Didrikson took up golf in 1932, and in November 1934 she shot seventy-five to qualify in her first tournament, the Fort Worth Women's Invitational. Her first tournament victory was in April 1935, when she won the Texas Women's Amateur Championship, and the United States Golf Association immediately made her a professional, a disappointment because there were only two professional golf tournaments for women at the time. In 1938 she married George Zaharias, a professional wrestler and promoter, who began to manage her career. He arranged for her to sit out of professional play for three years, between 1940 and 1943, to regain her amateur status. During that time she played in professional tournaments but refused cash prizes. Once the tournaments resumed after the war, Zaharias played a full schedule and won a series of fourteen consecutive titles, including the British Women's Amateur Championship, the first ever won by an American, in 1947. Though she was known for her long drives, it was her precise short game that won tournaments for her.

LPGA

Babe Didrikson Zaharias turned professional again in August 1947 and founded the Ladies' Professional Golf Association in January 1948. From 1949 to 1951 she was the top LPGA money winner. In 1953 she won her third United States Women's Open by 13 strokes, her last victory. She died of cancer in 1956. Babe Didrikson Zaharias was named Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press in 1932 for track and in 1944-1946 and 1950 for golf. In 1950 she was named the greatest female athlete of the first half of the twentieth century by the AP.

Source:

Elizabeth A. Lynn, Babe Didrikson Zaharias (New York: Chelsea House, 1989).

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