(June 26, 1911 – September 27, 1956) athlete
Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias was named “Woman Athlete of the Half Century” in 1950 for her skills in basketball, track & field and golf.
Mildred, called “Baby” in her early years, was always competitive, interested in sports, and eager to play boys’ games with her brothers. After hitting five home runs in one baseball game, “Baby” became “Babe” (Babe Ruth was then in his heyday), a nickname that remained with her for the rest of her life.
At the age of 15, Babe was the high-scoring forward on the girls’ basketball team at Beaumont Senior High School. She attracted the attention of Melvin J. McCombs, coach of one of the best girls’ basketball teams in the nation. In February 1930, McCombs secured a job for her with the Employers Casualty Company of Dallas, and she was soon a star player on its Golden Cyclones. She returned to Beaumont in June to graduate with her high school class. The Golden Cyclones won the national championship the next three years, and she was All-American forward for two of those years.
Didrikson soon turned her attention to track and field. At the National Women’s AAU Track Meet in 1931, she won first place in eight events and was second in a ninth. In 1932, with much more interest in the meet because of the approaching Olympics, she captured the championship, scoring 30 points; the Illinois Women’s Athletic Club, which entered a team of 22 women, placed second with 22 points. Babe then went to the Olympics.
Women were allowed to enter only three events, but she broke four world records; she won the javelin throw, with 143 feet, 4 inches, and won the 80-meter hurdles, twice breaking the previous world record (her best time was 11.7 seconds). She made a world record high jump, but the jump was disallowed and she was awarded second place.
The noted sports writer Paul Gallico remarked, “On every count, accomplishment, temperament, personality, and color, she belongs to the ranks of those story-book champions of our age of innocence.” Gallico also referred to her as “the most talented athlete, male or female, ever developed in our country.”
Didrikson began playing golf in 1931 or 1932. According to Gallico, in 1932, in her 11th game of golf, she drove 260 yards from the first tee and played the second nine in 43. She herself stated that she entered her first golf tournament in the fall of 1934. Although she did not win, she captured the qualifying round with a 77. In April 1935, in the Texas State Women’s Championship, she carded a birdie on the par-5 31st hole, to win the tournament two-up.
In the summer of 1935 she was declared a professional because of an unauthorised endorsement. She accepted the decision and for several years traveled about the country giving golf exhibitions. She also appeared on the vaudeville circuit with a number of different acts. She was the only woman on the Babe Didrikson All-American basketball team and played a few games with the House of David baseball team.
It was during these years that she pitched an inning for the St. Louis Cardinals in an exhibition game with the Philadelphia Athletics. She excelled at almost everything she tried: when only 16 she won a prize for a dress that she had made, at the Texas State Fair; she could type 86 words a minute; she could throw a baseball from deep center field to home plate—once a throw of hers was measured at over 300 feet.
She applied for reinstatement as an amateur golfer in 1941 and was reinstated in January 1943. Utilising her tremendous powers of concentration, her almost unlimited self-confidence and her patience, she began to take up golf seriously. She would drive as many as 1,000 balls a day, take lessons for five or six hours, and play until her hands were blistered and bleeding.
In 1947, Zaharias became the first American woman to win the British Ladies’ Amateur Championship, at Gullane, Scotland. On one hole she stroked a drive so far that a spectator whispered, “She must be Superman’s sister.” That August she announced that she was turning professional. For the next six years she dominated women’s golf.
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