OK, so picture this. It's July 1932, Evanston,
Illinois. You're at the AAU Championships. This
is basically the Olympic trials for the U .S.
Big one. Right. And you see all these teams arriving.
You've got the Illinois Women's Athletic Club
with like a whole busload of athletes, squads
with coaches, trainers, the whole nine yards.
And then standing there on the grass is the team
for the Employers Casualty Insurance Company
of Dallas. And if you're looking for the rest
of that team, why? You'd be looking for a why.
Because it's one person, a 21 -year -old named
Babe Didrikson. Yeah, and secretary was her official
job title. Yeah. That was really just to keep
her amateur status. Ah, okay. In reality, she
was an... industrial league basketball star yeah
but yeah she walks into this huge national championship
by herself the story goes that an official asked
where the rest of her team was and she supposedly
just said i am the team which i mean that sounds
like a line somebody wrote for a movie decades
later it does but you look at the score sheet
and it completely backs it up it's unbelievable
she didn't just show up for one race she entered
eight of the ten events So you have to imagine
her just running from the javelin pit over to
the hurdles, then to the high jump. And at the
end of the day, the Illinois club, with all their
athletes, scored 22 points. Babe Dedrickson scored
30. All by herself, she won the entire national
team championship alone. That's the level of,
I don't know, dominance I want to dig into today.
We throw around the phrase greatest of all time
a lot, you know, from Michael Jordan, Serena
Williams. Sure. When you look at the life of
Babe Didrikson Zarias, it makes you wonder if
we're even asking the right question. Those legends
dominated one sport. And she dominated, what,
three? All -American in basketball, multiple
Olympic goals in track and field, and then she
completely reinvented herself and became one
of the greatest golfers of all time. Not to mention,
she was a sewing champion and recorded songs.
It sounds made up. Well, and it wasn't just that
she won. You have to understand the context.
She shattered what people in the 30s and 40s
thought a woman could. Okay, let's look at the
32 Olympics in Los Angeles because that's when
she really just exploded onto the world scene.
It's amazing. She actually qualified for five
different events. Five. Yeah. But the rules back
then for women only allowed them to compete in
three. That's a shame in itself. It is. So she
had to choose. She picked the javelin, the 80
-meter hurdles, and the high jump. And immediately
wins gold in the javelin. Right away. Sets an
Olympic record. Then she goes to the hurdles,
which is such a technical event. One tiny mistake
and you're done. And she doesn't just win. No,
she breaks her own world record in the final.
11 .7 seconds. Just, you know, another day at
the office for her. But then comes the high jump.
This is where we get the only blemish on her
record, if you can call a silver medal that.
It was a huge controversy. She actually cleared
the exact same height as the gold medalist, Jean
Shiley. They both set a new world record. So
why silver? The judges. They didn't like her
technique. She went over the bar headfirst. The
Fosbury flop, basically. Or a precursor to it.
Exactly. But in 1932, the rules were very strict.
You had to go over feet first. They considered
her style a dive, not a jump. So even though
she cleared the height, they knocked her down
to silver. It's just wild that she was so far
ahead of her time that the rules hadn't even
caught up to her. That's a great way to put it.
Now... While we're on the 32 team, our sources
mention a much darker side to this story. There
was an incident on the train out to L .A. Yes.
This is an important part of her story. The team
included two African -American women, Tidy Pickett
and Louise Stokes. Which was a big deal at the
time. A huge deal. But the environment wasn't
welcoming. Accounts from the time report that
on the train, Babe threw a pitcher of ice water
on Pickett and Stokes. Was that, I mean, was
it a prank or was it malicious? The historical
record suggests it was racially motivated. Babe
was known for being brash, but she had also apparently
said she didn't think black athletes should be
on the team. Wow. And later, Pickett and Stokes
were both pulled from the relay team. They were
replaced by two white runners who were actually
slower. It's a really stark reminder that...
You know, being a sports hero doesn't automatically
make you a moral one. No. And it frames who she
was. She was a product of a segregated Texas
in that era. Yeah. But it also speaks to her,
her intense individualism. She wasn't a teammate.
She was a solo act, always. Right. She saw everyone
as competition. Exactly. And that probably fueled
her, but it also made her a pretty difficult
and lonely figure after the cheering stopped.
So the Olympics end. She's now the famous Wonder
Girl, but it's 1932. We're deep in the Great
Depression. There's no pro track circuit for
women. What does she even do? She hustles. I
mean, that's the only word for it. She tours
the country playing billiards exhibitions. She
had a barnstorming basketball team called Babe
Didrikson's All -Americans. Was she the only
woman on it? She was the only woman on the court
playing against men. And then there was baseball.
OK, this part blows my mind because usually this
is a publicity stunt. Right. They swing and miss
a few times for the cameras. Yeah, but the box
scores here say something totally different.
Oh, it's not a stunt. She pitched in actual major
league spring training games. Yeah. In 1934,
she pitched an inning for the Philadelphia Athletics
against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Against real major
leaguers. Real major leaguers. She gave up no
hits. He walked one batter and then she started
a triple play to end the inning. A triple play.
Against the Dodgers. A few days after that, she
pitched for the Cardinals against the Red Sox.
Gave up a few runs in that one. But she got the
final out when a batter flew out to Joe Medwick
in left field. A future Hall of Famer. I'm just
trying to wrap my head around the physics of
it all. What allows one person to be elite at
so many different motions? Okay, so this is the
key. It's not magic. It's the kinetic chain.
Explain that. Think about throwing a javelin.
The power doesn't come from your arm. It comes
from your hips. You plant your foot, you rotate
your hips with incredible speed, and your arm
is just the end of the wheel. Okay, I can picture
that. That explosive hip rotation, that's the
engine. And that exact same mechanical motion
is the core of a powerful golf swing. So when
she finally picks up a golf club around 1935...
She wasn't really starting from scratch. She
was a latecomer to the sport in her mid -20s,
but she already had the engine. She just had
to learn how to aim it. Which explains that famous
quote from Byron Nelson, one of the all -time
greats in men's golf. That he only knew eight
men who could hit a golf ball farther than her.
And he wasn't exaggerating. She even played against
the men, right? In PGA events. Yes. In 1938,
she played in the LA Open. No woman did that
again for decades until Annika Sorenstam. But
her peak year against the men was 1945. That's
the one. She played in three PGA tournaments,
and she made the 36 -hole cut in two of them.
To this day, she is the only woman who has ever
made the cut in a regular PGA Tour event. That
one stat, I mean, that feels like it should just
end any debate. It's the ultimate proof. Yeah.
But you can imagine in 1945 how that went over.
A woman outdriving the men wearing trousers,
being loud and competitive. The media coverage
from that time is... It's rough to read. They
called her a muscle mall. The press just didn't
know what to do with her. Thinking was that sports
were masculine. So if a woman was too good at
them, there was this anxiety that she was somehow
becoming a man. They wrote columns telling her
to go home and get prettied up. It was constant.
It clearly affected her. Because in the late
30s, you see this conscious shift. She tries
to soften her image. She starts wearing skirts
on the golf course. And she gets married. To
George Zaharias, a pro wrestler called the Crying
Greek from Cripple Creek. It was a very public
marriage. It was her way of signaling to the
world, see, I am a normal woman. I have a husband.
But her private life, especially later, was a
lot more complicated than that. Much more complicated.
Yeah. In 1950, she met a young golfer on the
tour named Betty Dodd. They became inseparable.
And eventually Betty Dodd moved in with Babe
and George. For the last six years of Babe's
life, right? That's right. And by all accounts,
from friends and biographers, it was a romantic
relationship. They didn't use the word lesbian
back then. It just wasn't part of the public
vocabulary. But it's clear they were partners.
So she's navigating this incredible public career
while also having to hide this essential part
of her private life. A huge pressure. Yeah. But
on the course, she's unstoppable. She helps found
the LPGA in 1950. She wins the Grand Slam, all
three majors that existed at the time. She is,
without a doubt, on top of the world. And then
in 1953, the diagnosis? Yeah. She'd been feeling
tired, went to the doctor. It was colon cancer.
And in the 50s, that diagnosis was basically
a death sentence. The surgery she had was a colostomy.
I think for a golfer, that's just, I can't even
imagine. No. They remove part of your intestine
and create an opening in your abdomen. You have
to wear a bag. Yeah. Now think about that violent
twisting golf swing we just talked about. Right.
Her abdominal muscles had just been sliced through.
Most people would just retire, be thankful to
be alive. But not her. Not even close. She was
out of the hospital and practicing within a few
months. Which brings us to the 1954 U .S. Women's
Open. This moment, to me, is what elevates her
beyond just a great athlete into something almost
mythical. It's the Peabody Country Club in Massachusetts.
It's incredibly hot. Babe is wearing this heavy
corset to protect herself and hold the colostomy
bag in place. She's in constant pain. And she
doesn't just manage to finish the tournament.
She doesn't just win. She destroys the field.
She wins by 12 strokes. 12 strokes? Less than
a year after that surgery? It's physically incomprehensible.
And that was the year she finally seemed to let
that individualistic armor down. She told the
press she wasn't just playing for herself anymore,
but for everyone in hospitals. It was a beautiful
comeback story, but it was a short one. Very
short. The cancer came back. She died in 1956.
She was only 45 years old. When you look back,
it feels like we're looking at a mythological
figure. But it makes me wonder, if Beza Harris
was born in, say, 2005 instead of 1911, what
would happen? And that's the great paradox of
her story, isn't it? How so? If she's born today,
A coach sees her raw talent at age eight. She
gets put into an elite track program. She spends
the next 15 years perfecting her hurdle technique.
She wins an Olympic gold, gets a huge shoe deal,
and has a fantastic career. But she probably
never plays basketball at high level. She definitely
never pitches against the Dodgers. And she almost
certainly never even picks up a golf club. So
the modern sports machine, which is built to
create these perfect specialists. It would actually
prevent a Babe Zaharias from ever existing. We've
optimized sports to the point where that kind
of renaissance athlete is basically extinct.
She wasn't just a unicorn. She was maybe the
last of her kind. I think so. A true one of a
kind. A good thing to think about next time you
watch an athlete who is the best in the world
at just one thing. Remember the woman who was
the best at everything she tried? Thanks for
digging into this with us. My pleasure. We'll
be back with another depth dive soon.