Babe Didrikson Zaharias

The New York World-Telegram’s sports columnist Joe Williams once wrote that Babe Didrikson Zaharias “would be much better if she and her ilk stayed at home, got themselves prettied up and waited for the phone to ring.”

Zaharias is remembered as one of the greatest athletes of all time, an Olympic gold medalist in track and field and the dominant female golfer in the earliest days of the LPGA. Williams is not remembered at all.

Born Mildred Ella Didrikson in Port Arthur, Texas, in 1911, Zaharias mastered the sports that captured her attention. She played basketball, baseball, tennis and volleyball. She boxed, swam, cycled and bowled. Childhood friends nicknamed her after Babe Ruth, in awe of her mammoth home runs.

At 5½ feet tall, Zaharias won her medals at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles. She might have won more — she qualified for five Olympic events that year, but women were only allowed to compete in three.

She was a founding member of the women’s golf tour, where she won 10 majors — more than all but three other golfers in the tour’s history. At one point she won more than a dozen tournaments in a row. The Associated Press named her the female athlete of the year for three consecutive years.

When a reporter asked her if there was anything she did not play, she answered: “Yeah, dolls.”

Zaharias died of cancer in 1956, at the age of 45.

— Reid Wilson

photo: Getty Images