Babe Didrikson
She achieved outstanding success in golf, basketball, and track and field.
Life history
Mildred Ella Didrikson was the sixth of seven children born in the coastal oil city of Port Arthur in southeastern Texas. Three of her seven siblings were born in Norway, and the other three were born in Port Arthur.
She always claimed to have acquired the nickname "Babe" (after Babe Ruth) upon hitting five home runs in a childhood baseball game, but she was called "Baby" as a toddler.
Though best known for her athletic gifts, Didrikson had many talents and was a competitor in even the most domestic of occupations: sewing. An excellent seamstress, she made many of the clothes she wore, including her golfing outfits.
She won the sewing championship at the 1931 State Fair of Texas in Dallas. In 1929, Didrikson graduated from Beaumont High School but did not attend college.
Her biggest seller was "I Felt a Little Teardrop" with "Detour" on the flip side.
Already famous as Babe Didrikson, she married George Zaharias (1908-1984), a professional wrestler, in St. Called the "Crying Greek from Cripple Creek," Zaharias also did some part-time acting.
The Zahariases had no children and were rebuffed by authorities when they sought to adopt. He married one of her nurses several years before his death.
The likeness of Zaharias was chosen for the 18-cent stamp.
Babe Zaharias Park is located in Beaumont adjacent to her museum.
Athletic achievements
Didrikson gained world fame in track and field and All-American status in basketball.
She played organized baseball and softball and was an expert diver, roller-skater and bowler. She won two gold medals and one silver medal for track and field in the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics.
AAU champion
Didrikson's first job after high school was nominally as a secretary, for the Employers Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas.
In fact, she was employed so that she could play basketball as an amateur on the company's "industrial team", the Golden Cyclones, in competition governed by the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). Despite leading the team to an AAU Basketball Championship in 1931, Didrikson first achieved wider attention as a track and field athlete.
Representing her company in the 1932 AAU Championships, she competed in eight out of ten events, winning five outright, and tying for first for a sixth.
In the process, she set five world records in the javelin throw, 80-meter hurdles, high jump and baseball throw. Didrikson's performances were enough to win the team championship, despite her being the only member of her team.
1932 Olympics
Since the AAU Championships were the de facto US Olympic Trials, Didrikson qualified for the 1932 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
By the rules then in effect, as a female athlete, she was limited to entering up to three events, and she chose the javelin throw, the 80 meter hurdles and the high jump. She nearly won all three events: she won gold medals in the javelin (143 feet, 4 inches) and hurdles (11.7 seconds).
The judges, however, disallowed her jumping style (jumping over headfirst) in the final tie breaker jump, and declared Jean Shiley the Olympic champion. After the Games, Shiley and Didrikson split their two medals - the gold one and the silver one.
Post Olympics
In the following years, she performed on the vaudeville circuit, travelled with teams like Babe Didrikson's All-Americans basketball team and the bearded House of David (commune) team.
She was noted in the January 1933 press for playing (and badly losing) a multi-day straight pool match in New York City against famed female cueist Ruth McGinnis.
Golf
By 1935, she picked up the sport of golf, a latecomer to the sport by which she would become the most famous. Shortly thereafter, despite the brevity of her experience, she was denied amateur status, and so in January 1938, she competed in the Los Angeles Open, a men's PGA (Professional Golfers' Association) tournament, a feat no other woman would even try until Annika Sörenstam, Suzy Whaley, and Michelle Wie almost six decades later.
After gaining back her amateur status in 1942, she won the 1946-47 United States Women's Amateur Golf Championships, as well as the 1947 British Ladies Amateur Golf Championship – the first American to do so – and three Western Open victories. Having formally turned professional in 1947, she dominated the [Women's Professional Golf Association and later the Ladies Professional Golf Association, of which she was a founding member.
Serious illness ended her career in the mid-1950s.
Zaharias even won a tournament named after her, the Babe Zaharias Open of Beaumont, Texas. She won 17 straight women's amateur victories, a feat never equaled by anyone, including Tiger Woods.
Totaling both her amateur and professional victories, Zaharias won a total of 82 golf tournaments.
Charles McGrath of the New York Times wrote of Zaharias, "Except perhaps for Arnold Palmer, no golfer has ever been more beloved by the gallery."
Against the men
While Zaharias missed the cut in a PGA tour event during her first year of tournament golf, later as she became more experienced she made the cut in every PGA tour event she entered. She continued her cut streak at the Phoenix Open, where she shot 77-72-75-80 finishing in 33rd place.
Unlike other female golfers competing in men's events, she got into the Phoenix and Tucson opens through 36-hole qualifiers, as opposed to a sponsor's exemption.
Last years
Zaharias had her greatest year in 1950 when she completed the Grand Slam of the three women's majors of the day, the U.S. That year, she became the fastest LPGA golfer to ever reach 10 wins.
She took the Vare Trophy for lowest scoring average, her only win of that trophy, and her 10th and final major with a U.S. She also served as the president of the LPGA from 1952 to 1955.
Her colon cancer recurred in 1955, and that limited her schedule to eight golfing events that season, but she managed two wins, which stand as her final ones in competitive golf.
At the time of her death, at age forty-five, she was still in the front ranks of female golfers. She and her husband had established the Babe Zaharias Fund to support cancer clinics. "The Babe" is buried at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Beaumont.
Cultural impacts
The Babe Didrikson Zaharias Museum in Beaumont is also the chamber of commerce welcoming center.
Zaharias broke the accepted models of femininity in her time, even the accepted models of female athleticism.
Although just 5'5" tall, she was physically strong and socially straightforward about her strength. However, in the same time period, the Associated Press chose her as the "Female Athlete of the Year" six times for track & field and for golfing, and, in 1950, overwhelmingly voted for her as the "Greatest Female Athlete of the First Half of the Century". Aside from her impact on the women and girls of her time, she impressed seasoned sportswriters also:
She is beyond all belief until you see her perform...Then you finally understand that you are looking at the most flawless section of muscle harmony, of complete mental and physical coordination, the world of sport has ever seen.
– sportswriter Grantland Rice, quoted by ESPN,
She was inducted into the Hall of Fame of Women's Golf in 1951.
It is no longer in print but is available in many libraries.
In 1975, the film Babe, based on Zaharias' life, was released, with Susan Clark playing the lead role. LPGA Tour wins (41)
1940 (1) Women's Western Open (as an amateur)
1944 (1) Women's Western Open (as an amateur)
1945 (1) Women's Western Open (as an amateur)
1947 (2) Tampa Open, Titleholders Championship (as an amateur)
1948 (3) All American Open, World Championship, U.S.