Babe Didrikson Zaharias Biography

Athlete and Olympic champion. Born June 26, 1914 in Port Arthur, Texas, the daughter of Ole Didrikson and Hannah Marie Olsen. Her father and mother were from Norway, where her mother had been an outstanding skier and skater. Her father was a ship's carpenter and cabinetmaker. The family, who spelled their name Didriksen, moved to Beaumont, Texas, when Mildred was three.

Times were often difficult for the large Didrikson family, and as an adolescent Mildred worked at many part-time jobs, including sewing gunny sacks at a penny a sack. Her father, a firm believer in physical conditioning, built a weight-lifting apparatus out of a broomstick and some old flatirons. 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 fifteen, 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 thirty points; the Illinois Women's Athletic Club, which entered a team of twenty-two women, placed second with twenty-two points. Babe then went to the Olympics. Women were allowed to enter only three events, but she broke four world's 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 eleventh 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 thirty-first hole, to win the tournament two-up. In the summer of 1935 she was declared a professional because of an unauthorized 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 sixteen she won a prize for a dress that she had made, at the Texas State Fair; she could type eighty-six 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.