(The following story on Babe Didrikson Zaharias was written for the Los Angeles Mirror - News the day following the death of one of the great all-around athletes of all time and certainly the greatest of all women athletes. It ran in a series of four articles. Only the first two, concerning her early fling at track and field, appear here.) (1956)
The slender girl with the abruptly bobbed, boyish black hair, who was doing a strip tease en route to Dyche Stadium in Evanston, ill., that warm July day in 1932, was not Gypsy Rose Lee or Sally Rand.
It was a one-girl track team from Texas named Mildred (Babe) Didrikson. Unlike Lady Godiva, the Babe did not ride a white horse. She was in a Chicago taxicab and she was late, as traffic held her up en route to the scene of the combined National AAU women's track and field championship and U. S. Olympic team trials.
Her chaperone, Mrs. Henry Wood, "team mother" at Employers Casualty in Dallas, was busy holding a blanket around her 18-year-old prodigy while the future world's greatest all-time woman athlete was wriggling and squirming out of her clothes and into her scanty track suit.
The pair arrived at the Northwestern University stadium just as the various teams were being introduced on the field. Some squads as big as 15 or 20 girls were running out onto the field as their team names were called out over the loud-speaker. The Illinois Women's Athletic Club had 22.
In a moment or two the PA system called out, "Employers Casualty of Dallas, Texas." Out there, all alone, popped the Babe, waving her arms and grinning from ear to ear.
"You never heard such a roar," the Babe relates in her own book, "This Life I've Led" (A.S. Barnes & Co.). "It brought out goose bumps all over me. I can feel them now, just thinking about it."
This, actually, was the introduction of Babe Didrikson Zaharias to the world that lies beyond the far-flung borders of her native state. Oh, she had won All-America honors in basketball, and in the 1930 and 1931 track and field championships she had won a total of five national titles.
Only Texans and Texas had paid much attention to that. But with the 1932 Olympic Games coming up two weeks later at Los Angeles, the feats achieved by the Babe this July 16 in Dyche Stadium made headlines all over the world.
In the 1930 meet at Dallas the Babe had won the javelin and baseball throw and in 1931 at Jersey City she had won the broad jump, 80-meter hurdles and baseball throw, the last with a 296-foot heave that remains the world's record for women to this day.
Stella Walsh, whose career was starting at the same time Babe's was, recalls that she had won the 100 and 220-yard dashes in the 1930 meet at Dallas and that she actually tangled with the Didrikson girl only in the broad jump.
"She jumped first and I followed with a leap that broke the world record," Stella recalls. "Then Babe broke my world record and I broke hers. This was probably the greatest competitive duel in sports history. Babe broke the world record five times and I had to break it right back again six times in order to beat her."
For two and a half hours the Babe was flying all over the Dyche Stadium field, for she was entered in eight of the 10 events on the program, skipping only the 50 and 220-yard dashes. She was shut out in a semifinal of the 100 meters, running third. She placed fourth in the discus, an event with which she was not very familiar and which was won at 133 feet by Ruth Osborn of Shelbyville, Mo. Lillian Copeland, who two weeks later won the Olympic title, placed third.
But the Babe won five events and tied with Jean Shiley of the Meadowbrook Club, Philadelphia, in the high jump at the new world record height of 5 ft. 3 3/16 in.
The Babe's winning events and her marks were as follows: 80 m hurdles---12.1 (after 11.9 in a heat). Shot-put---39 ft. 6 1/4in. Javelin---139'3". Baseball throw---272 ft. 2 in. Broad jump---17 ft. 6 in.
The Babe had scored 30 points and, all alone, had won the meet for her team. Second place went to the Illinois Women's AC with 22.
George Kirksey, writing the story of that meet for the United Press, called it "the most amazing series of performances ever accomplished by any individual, male or female, in track and field history". And, for a one-day performance, it probably was.
"In my book the Babe always will be the greatest," Stella Walsh was telling me here this week. "None of them could compare with her as an all-round athlete. She could do anything, most of the time with little or no practice, and never will I forget that day in the national championships at Dallas when I had to break the world's broad jump record a total of six times in six jumps to beat her by a quarter of an inch."
Babe Didrikson lost no time in asserting her supremacy in the 1932 Olympic Games at Los Angeles.
The very first time she went into action she set an Olympic and world record, won a gold medal and nearly threw her right shoulder out of joint.
This was in the women's javelin throw, which began at 5:30 on Sunday afternoon, July 31.
When the 105-pound, 5 ft. 6 1/2-inch Miss Didrikson went to the starting mark of the javelin throw for the first time she saw, in the far distance, a little German flag marking the world record of 132 ft. 7/8 in. made in 1930 by Fraulein Ellen Braumuller. The fraulein, together with her teammate, Tilly Fleisher, was the favorite in the competition just getting under way.
All the Babe ever needed to make her do her best was a visible opponent to beat or a flag to shoot at. She couldn't see Ellen Braumuller just now, but that little German flag was like a cape waving in front of a bull.
The Babe hadn't warmed up properly as they would not allow practice throws and she felt that the usual manner of javelin throwers in throwing the spear into the ground was the wrong motion. She did try this once - and almost threw it into one of the German girls' legs.
"As I let the spear go, " Babe relates her own story, "my hand slipped off the cord on the handle. Instead of arching the way it usually did, that javelin went out there like a catcher's peg from home plate to second base. It looked like it was going to go right through the flag.
"But it kept on about 14 feet past for a new Olympic and world's record of 143'4". Nobody knew it, but I tore a cartilage in my right shoulder when my hand slipped making that throw. On my last two turns, people thought I wasn't trying, because the throws weren't much good. But they didn't have to be."
Next came the 80-meter hurdles, in which event the Babe was up against a stout competitor in Evelyn Hall of Chicago, now a Glendale City Playground Department worker.
The final in this event took place on Thursday, Aug. 4. The Babe was so anxious to set another new record that she jumped the gun.
A second false start and Babe would be out of the race. She held back to be sure it was a fair start before she leaped out of her holes. She was in lane 2, with Mrs. Hall to her left in lane 1 and Marjorie Clark of South Africa in lane 3. This Miss Clark had set the existing world record at Durban in 1930. That mark was 11.8.
At the half-way mark Mrs. Hall was a yard or perhaps 4 feet ahead of the Babe, who was even with the South African. Far over in lane 6, holding second place by a narrow margin, was Violet Webb of Great Britain, nearly even with the leader.
It wasn't until the fifth hurdle that Babe caught up. Mrs. Hall contends to this day she received a vigorous jab in the ribs as the two battled side by side over the final barrier and on to the tape.
It was one of the two closest finishes of the 1932 Games. It was Miss Didriksnn by an inch in the new world and Olympic record time of 11.7 seconds,
Of this performance Damon Runyan wrote: "Miss Babe (Whatta-gal) Didrikson leaps the hurdles like a gay gazelle and runs on the flat like a scared coyote. The California breeze sifts through her bobbed black hair. She runs in a neat costume of white consisting of a skimpy shirt and little panties which reveal many of her muscles.
On Sunday, the final day of track and field, came the women's high jump, along with the marathon and finals of relay races for both sexes. It was here that the Babe renewed her rivalry with the tall, beautiful Jean Shiley of Philadelphia.
It soon became a two-gal competition. All others had been eliminated. They raised the bar to 5 ft. 5 in. Both made it; the Babe on her second try. Both had three misses at 5 ft 5 3/4 in. and they lowered it to 5 ft. 5 1/4 in.
Jean Shiley made it on her first try. Now they were jumping off a tie on a basis of one miss only and then you were out if your opponent succeeded. No three tries as it is now. The Babe had to clear 5 ft. 5 1/4 in. on this next jump or else. Or else settle for a silver medal,
Babe Didrikson never was a girl to settle for No. 2 in anything.
Using the same form she had used all day, she sailed right on over the bar - head first. Or WAS it head first? One official stepped forward and ruled the Babe out for "diving". Today a head-first dive is legal. Then it wasn't.
The Babe told the judges she had been jumping that same way all afternoon, but they just said, "If you were diving before, we didn't see it. We just saw it this time."
Charley Lehman, veteran Movietone Newsreel cameraman, was telling me just this summer that his pictures of that jump proved the Babe's feet crossed the bar before her head.
Babe's reaction to her disqualification is well told in a Los Angeles Times interview printed the next day. It runs like this:
"I jumped as high as she did or higher."
"Did you know you were diving instead of jumping the correct way?"
"Nope."
"Did you ever have any trouble that way before? Have you ever been warned not to dive?"
"Nope."
"Do you feel bad, Babe?"
"Nope."
"Are you glad Jean won?"
"Yep."
"Have you got any complaints?"
"Nope."
OLYMPIC RESULTS
Javelin- 1, Didrikson (143'4"); 2, Braumuller (142'8-5/8"); 3, Fleischer (142'1-1/4"). 80 m Hurdles- Didrikson (11.7); 2, Hall (11.7); 3, Clark. High jump- Shiley (5'5-1/4");2, Didrikson (5'5"); 3, Dawes, Canada (5'3").
Copyright© 1959, Track & Field News