Athlete Profile

Babe Didrikson Zaharias All-Around Athlete

Nearly half a century after her death she can still stake a claim to being the greatest female athlete of all time. Few athletes of either gender were more talented and it can be argued that none were more versatile. Babe Didrikson Zaharias was driven to excel and so she did, at virtually every athletic endeavor she attempted.
She was bold and brash and her confidence often irritated those around her. But no other female athlete has cast a longer shadow over history.
Mildred Ella Didriksen (she changed the spelling of her name to Didrikson as an adult) was born in Port Arthur, Texas on June 26, 1914.
She grew up in Beaumont where her athletic talents were apparent at an early age. So were her competitive instincts. In high school Didrikson’s best sport was basketball but she also excelled in swimming, volleyball, tennis and baseball.
She was not as successful in the classroom as she was on the athletic field however and dropped out of school at 16 to go to work for the Casualty Insurance Company in Dallas. While she was officially employed as a stenographer her primary function was to represent the company in athletic competition.
Between 1930 and ‘32 Didrikson, now known as Babe, in honor of Babe Ruth, was an All-American basketball player and led the Casualty Insurance Company Golden Cyclones to the 1931 national AAU championship. While she also played softball for the company team she became intrigued by track and field and soon became a world-class competitor. Her greatest single performance may have been on July 16, 1932 when Didrikson, who had just turned 18, won the national women’s track and field championship all by herself as a one-woman team representing the Casualty Insurance Company. In the course of a single day she won six events, setting four world records in the process.
Shortly thereafter at the 1932 Olympic games in Los Angeles, Didrikson won gold medals in the javelin and the 80-meter hurdles and just missed a third medal in the high jump when her jumping technique was ruled illegal (she wound up being placed second).
After the Olympics Didrikson returned to Dallas where she soon became embroiled in a feud with the AAU over her amateur status. Within a year she was touring the country with a barnstorming basketball team and later with the House of David baseball team but she gained a new lease on her athletic life when she took up golf, supposedly at the suggestion of sportswriter Grantland Rice. By 1935 she was the Texas women’s amateur champion but the United States Golf Association revoked her amateur status shortly thereafter.
Now married to wrestler George Zaharias, the Babe kept playing golf. She won the Western Open, a major championship at the time, in 1940. After the United States entered World War II she gave exhibitions to promote the sale of war bonds and reached an agreement with the USGA to steer clear of professional events. Her amateur status was restored in 1943 but she won four more professional tournaments as an amateur, including two more Western Opens and the Titleholders Championship, another major championship, in 1947. That same year she became the first American to win the British Women’s Amateur before turning pro for good. Over the next seven years she won 36 professional tournaments. Six were major championships including three U.S. Women’s Opens (1949, ‘50 and ‘54), the Western Open in 1950 and the Titleholders in 1950 and ’52. In 1950 she swept all three of the LPGA”s major championships, becoming the first woman to win three majors in a season; only Mickey Wright and Pat Bradley have done it since.
She was named Woman Athlete of the Year by the Associated Press six times between 1931 and 1954 and was named Woman Athlete of the First Half of the 20th Century in an AP poll. Later, the AP and Sports Illustrated both named her the outstanding female athlete of the 20th century.
No doubt, Babe Didrikson Zaharias would have had some strong opinions on the growth of womens’ athletics during the Title IX era. Sadly, she never lived to see that growth. After a three-year battle with cancer she died on September 27, 1956 at age 45.
She was a fine athlete but to call her merely an athlete is to say that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were merely politicians.
She was also a pioneer and she suffered the hardships that pioneers must endure. Her success brought her not only notoriety and adulation but criticism, some of it blatantly cruel.
Zaharias helped clear a path for those who have followed her for the past 80 years. Every female athlete, regardless of her sport or level of success, owes her a debt of gratitude.