The Story of American Golf by Wind Herbert Warren;

Author:Wind, Herbert Warren;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

THE BABE

The outstanding performer in the 1932 Olympics was a nineteen-year-old girl, a lithe, smooth-muscled, deep-jawed Texan named Didrikson, Mildred “Babe” Didrikson. On the opening day of the games, Babe created a new women’s record in the javelin when she tossed the spear 143 feet, 4 inches. She followed this by breaking the record in the high hurdles in winning her heat, and in the finals she lowered the mark again. In the high jump, after she and Jean Shiley had cleared 5 feet, 5¼ inches but could go no higher, the judges halted the jumpoff for first place by disqualifying Babe for “diving”—leaping over the bar head first. This surprising decision, so dismally typical of the aberrations of the big moguls of sport, forced the Babe to content herself with two firsts and a second.

Mildred Didrikson was a bronzed, sharp-featured girl who wore her hair like a boy and whose coordination had in it none of the jerks, the halts, the feminine wrinkles that often creep into the form of even the finest female athletes. She was the sixth of seven children born to Mr. and Mrs. Ole Didrikson, natives of Oslo who had migrated to Port Arthur, Texas. Encouraged, or rather left alone, by her sports-loving parents, Mildred—or Babe—played all the seasonal games with her three brothers and the kids in the neighborhood. She was more than a tomboy; she was a splendid athlete, judged by the strictest criteria. When the Didriksons moved to Beaumont, she won herself a spot on the Beaumont High School basketball team, and it was here that the saga of Babe Didrikson began to acquire momentum. Her shooting and floor work caught the eye of an official of a Dallas insurance company that kept its name in front of the public by sponsoring athletic teams. He told the Babe to be sure and look him up after graduation. She did. In her first year as a typist and a forward on the company’s girl quintet, Babe was merely unbelievable. She polished off a few of her rough points in her second year and was selected as a forward on the All-America team. She began to test her skill in other sports, and became an accomplished swimmer and diver, a Softball pitcher with a man’s fluid delivery, a good bowler and tennis player. Her virtuosity in track and field sports was perhaps more arresting. Two weeks before the Olympic Games in ’32, Babe entered seven events in the National A.A.U. Track and Field Championships held at Dyche Stadium in Evanston, Illinois. She won the javelin throw, the baseball throw, shot put, broad jump, and eighty-meter hurdles, tied for first in the high jump, and picked up a fourth in the discus. This satisfactory afternoon’s work made it hard for the Babe not to be disgruntled when the Olympic ruling, limiting a competitor to three events, allowed her no opportunity to show the folks what she could do when she was really warmed up.

On the final day of the Olympics, everyone in Los Angeles was still talking about Babe Didrikson.

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