F r e e dman

BABE
DIDRIKSON ZAHARIAS
was arguably the greatest woman athlete the world has
ever seen. She was an All-American basketball player, an Olympic

BABE DIDRIKSON ZAHARIAS THE MAKING OF A CHAMPION

gold medalist in track and field, and a championship golfer who won
eighty-two amateur and professional tournaments. She also mastered ten-
nis, played exhibition baseball, and was an accomplished diver and bowler.
Six times she was voted “Woman Athlete of the Year” by the Associated
Press. Most signifi­cantly, Babe accomplished all of this prior to 1960, at a BABE
time when “nice girls” didn’t take part in sports that made them perspire
too much. Bursting with self-confidence and determined to do DIDRIKSON
what felt natural, Babe redefined how female athletes, and
women in general, were expected to act by defying ZAHARIAS
convention time and time again. THE MAKING
OF A CHAMPION

H “Freedman is on top of his game with this engaging profile of one of this
century’s most remarkable athletes and larger-than-life personalities.”
—School Library Journal, starred review

“Freedman brings [Babe’s] irrepressible personality leaping from the page. . . .

This celebratory work gives readers a chance to cheer Zaharias’s
legendary life.” —Publishers Weekly

$10.99 U.S./ HIGHER IN CANADA

ISBN: 978-0-544-10491-4
by R u s s ell Fr e e dm a n
1540799

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt | www.hmhbooks.com “A vibrant biography that crushes any remaining myths about women in sports.” —Kirkus Reviews
 Copyright © 1999 by Russell Freedman

All rights reserved. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by

Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1999.

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions,
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

The text of this book is set in 11-point Palatino.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

Freedman, Russell.
Babe Didrikson Zaharias: the making of a champion / by Russell Freedman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 179) and index.
Summary: A biography of Babe Didrikson, who broke records in golf, track and field,
and other sports, at a time when there were few opportunities for female athletes.
1. Zaharias, Babe Didrikson, 1911–1956—Juvenile literature.
2. Athletes—United States—Biography—Juvenile literature.
3. Women athletes—United States—Biography—Juvenile literature.
[1. Zaharias, Babe Didrikson, 1911–1956. 2. Athletes. 3. Women—Biography.]
I. Title II. Title: Making of a champion.
GV697.Z26F74 1999
796.352’092—dc21 [B]
ISBN: 978-0-395-63367-0 hardcover
ISBN: 978-0-544-10491-4 paperback

Manufactured in China
SCP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
45XXXXXXXX
 ✩✩✩✩✩

Contents

1 ★ Breaking Barriers 9
2 ★ The Worst Kid on Doucette 15
3 ★ A Texas Tomboy 25
4 ★ Star of the Golden Cyclones 35
5 ★ The One-Woman Team 47
6 ★ Going for the Gold 55
7 ★ Show Business 71
8 ★ A New Sport and a New Image 87
9 ★ Romance 101
10 ★ Superman’s Sister 117
11 ★ “Okay, Babe’s Here!” 129
12 ★ Partners 141
13 ★ “I’m Not a Quitter” 151
AUTHOR’S NOTE 165
NOTES 167
IN SEARCH OF THE LIFE BABE LED: A SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY 179
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND PICTURE CREDITS 185
INDEX 187
Babe Didrikson jumps a hurdle.
 ✩✩✩ One ✩ ✩ ✩
BREAKING BARRIERS

A s far back as she could remember, Babe Didrikson Zaharias lived

only for sports, and she loved and excelled in them all. “Before I was
even into my teens,” she wrote in her autobiography, “I knew exactly
what I wanted to be when I grew up. My goal was to be the greatest ath-
lete that ever lived.”
As a second grader‚ she won her school’s marbles championship
against girls and boys much older than she. From then on, she never
looked back. She became an All-American basketball player, an Olympic
gold medalist in track and field, and a championship golfer who won
eighty-two amateur and professional tournaments. Along the way, she
mastered tennis, played organized baseball, and was an outstanding
diver, roller skater, and bowler. Her amazing versatility made her one of a
kind. “Is there anything you don’t play?” a reporter once asked. “Yeah,
dolls,” Babe replied.
For more than two decades, her wide, delighted smile appeared regu-
larly in the nation’s newspapers. Sportswriters called her “The Wonder

9
 Girl,” “The Super Athlete,” or simply “The Babe,” and the Associated
Press poll of sports editors voted her Woman Athlete of the Year an
unprecedented six times. In the eyes of many, she was and still is the great-
est woman athlete of all time.
Babe was lavishly gifted, but she became a champion through relent-
less practice and a burning desire to excel. When she took up tennis, she
played sixteen or seventeen practice sets a day. She ran the soles off a pair
of tennis shoes every two weeks. “Oh, how that girl would work for the
things she wanted,” her sister Lillie recalled.
Proud of her skills, supremely self-confident, Babe loved the limelight
and never hesitated to boast about her accomplishments. She tended to

Babe mastered tennis . . .

10 B AB E di dr i kson z ahar i as
 . . . and won
eighty-two golf
tournaments.

glamorize the story of her life, adding choice tidbits and details, putting a
shine on past events. As impressive as her achievements were, she could
not resist the temptation to embellish them. By the time she wrote her
autobiography, the actual facts of her life were so entangled with the leg-
end she created for herself that the line between them was often hazy.
And yet her triumphs are entered in the record books for all to see. Babe

B re a k i ng Bar r i e r s 11
 Didrikson Zaharias won more contests and broke more records than any
woman in sports history.
She rose to fame in an era when women athletes had few chances for
competition and were looked upon by many people as freaks or aberra-
tions. “Girls in sports were [considered] tomboys and a little weird,”
according to Babe’s friend and fellow golfer Peggy Kirk Bell. When Babe
made headlines as an Olympic gold medal winner in 1932, the participa-
tion of female athletes in the Olympics was still a hotly debated, contro-
versial issue. Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Olympic
movement, had assailed women’s sports as “against the laws of nature,”
an opinion shared by others who believed that competitive sports were
too strenuous for “the weaker sex.”
“You know, the ancient Greeks kept women out of their athletic
games,” said Avery Brundage, president of the Amateur Athletic Union.
“They wouldn’t even let them on the sidelines. I’m not so sure but they
were right.”
When Babe was growing up, those attitudes were being challenged.
She was nine years old in 1920, when the nineteenth amendment to the
Constitution finally gave American women the right to vote. That same
year, the United States sent its first women’s team—swimmers—to the
Olympics. Women were demanding equality in many areas of life, and
young women who loved sports had more opportunities than ever before.
Even so, competitive sports were still regarded as masculine territory.
An aspiring female athlete had to confront society’s strict view of what a
proper woman should be and should do. Young Babe Didrikson seemed
to defy conventional notions of femininity. She had the natural grace and
buoyancy of a born athlete, but she was also tough, strong, ambitious, and
fiercely competitive, with hacked-off hair and an unadorned face. Her bat-
tle to succeed as an athlete was, at the same time, a battle for the right to
be herself, and her example helped break down barriers not just for
women athletes, but for everyone. “Babe was a very brave girl or she
could never have become the person she was,” said her friend and former
teacher Ruth Scurlock.
Golf was the game she loved most of all, and with her wisecracks,
clowning, and trick shots, she brought a new sense of theater to the golf

12 B AB E di dr i kson z ahar i as
course. In 1947, she caused a sensation when she captured the British
Women’s Amateur golf championship, becoming the first American to
win that historic tournament since its inception in 1893. “We have not seen
a fairway phantom like her—not in 47 years,” marveled a London news-
paper. “What a Babe!”

B re a k i ng Bar r i e r s 13