Named The greaTesT female aTh-
lete of the 20th century by the Associ-
ated Press, Mildred “Babe” Didrikson, a
tough-talking Texan, excelled in a stun-
ning number of sports: track, golf, basket-
ball, baseball, tennis, swimming, bowling
and billiards among them. She was once
asked if there was any sport she didn’t
play. “Yeah, dolls,” she replied.
Born into a Norwegian immigrant
family in 1911, Didrikson caught the
eye of a Dallas insurance company with
her basketball skills when she was 18;
she quit school to join the firm’s Ama-
teur Athletic Union hoops team. She
was named an All- American from 1930
to 1932. In ’32, she was the sole repre-
sentative of the Employers Casualty
team at the U.S. amateur track-and-field
championships; over the course of three
hours, she finished first in five different
events—broad jump, shot put, javelin,
80-m hurdles and baseball throw—and
tied for first in the high jump, single-
handedly outscoring every other team
at the event. “Implausible is the adjec-
tive which best befits the Babe,” the New
York Times later declared.
At the Olympics in Los Angeles a few
weeks later, she became the only female
Olympian ever to collect individual med-
als in a running, a throwing and a jump-
ing event (the 80-m hurdles, javelinand high jump). That record still holds.
Almost overnight, Didrikson shot to
global fame. By refusing to conform to
early–20th century expectations of fem-
ininity, Didrikson showed that women
more than belonged on the playing field.
They too could break athletic barriers,
just like the men.
And yet, her athletic opportunities
proved sparse. “It would be much
better if she and her ilk stayed at home,
got themselves prettied up and waited
for the phone to ring,” one sports
columnist wrote. Didrikson turned to
vaudeville to make money. But even
as she sang and played harmonica, she
couldn’t be kept from competition. In
1934, Didrikson took her talents to the
golf course. Over the next two decades
she won 82 tournaments— including
an incredible 14 consecutive events in
one stretch—and became a founding
member of the LPGA. A year after being
diagnosed with colon cancer in 1953, she
won the U.S. Women’s Open by a record
12 strokes.
A proud pioneer of what’s now known
as trash talk, she was unafraid to inform
her competitors they were playing for
second place. And how exactly did she
launch those booming tee shots? “I just
loosen my girdle,” Didrikson said, “and
let the ball have it.”1932 | SYMBOL OF STRENGTHBABE DIDRIKSON
BY SEAN GREGORYGRAHAM: EVERETT; MONTESSORI: ULLSTEIN BILD/GETTY IMAGES; DIDRIKSON: BETTMANN/GETTY IMAGES^35