Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Wonder Girl The Magnificent Sporting Life of by Don Van Natta Jr. Babe Didrikson Zaharias: The 'greatest all-sport athlete' who helped revolutionize women's golf. In Beaumont, Texas, there is a small museum dedicated to a female double Olympic gold medalist and one of the greatest women golfers of all time. © Photo-Illustration: Max Pepper/Getty Images/CNN © Underwood Archives/Getty Images Zaharias became a "huge draw" for golf crowds due to her energetic levels on the course, according to Van Natta Jr. On some days, though, there will only be a handful of guests visiting the facility dedicated to the "greatest all-sport athlete of all time." Even in her hometown, the name Babe Didrikson Zaharias isn't always widely known. Zaharias, who was born in 1911 and named Mildred Ella Didrikson, not only helped transform golf from a predominantly amateur sport into a professional one, but also held multiple Olympic world records. As well as being one of the 13 founding members of the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) in 1950, she went on to win 14 consecutive tournaments at the peak of her career. However, because of Zaharias' love of entertaining the gallery on the golf course with lewd jokes and colorful language, coupled with her refusal to conform to the traditional stereotypes of femininity of the time, she was a pariah amongst her fellow competitors and the subject of sexism and prejudice from the media. "If somebody was looking at Babe and they were sexist or they didn't think that women belonged on a golf course or in a track and field event, she heard a lot of that," Don Van Natta Jr. -- author of "Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias" -- told CNN Sport. "She was criticized for her look; she was criticized for not being ladylike enough. There were comments made in the press, that she should be home sitting by the phone, waiting for a suitor to call her as opposed to being out competing. It was very harsh, negative, critical things. And they hurt her deeply." © Getty Images/Getty Images North America/Getty Images Zaharias throws the javelin to win the gold medal during the 1932 Olympic Games. 'American sports heroine' The daughter of immigrants from Norway, sport always played a big part in Zaharias' life. From baseball and basketball to track and field and tennis, Zaharias seemingly excelled at whichever sport she turned her hand to. She earned her nickname "Babe" as a result of her baseball ability and comparisons between her and Babe Ruth. While she tried golf early on, a career in athletics was Zaharias' primary focus at a young age. Such was her dedication and cross-discipline ability at track and field, stories of Zaharias single-handedly beating entire teams became common across Texas. The pinnacle of her athletic career coincided with the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, a time when athletes, unlike today, didn't always specialize in one sport, but often entered multiple disciplines in the hopes of achieving success. © Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire/AP Zaharias chips up to the green with a line of fans watching her. Women, however, were unable to enter more than three events, so Zaharias participated in the javelin, high jump and 80m hurdles. To this day, she is still the only track and field athlete, male or female, to win individual Olympic medals in running, throwing and jumping events. Zaharias won gold medals in both the hurdles and the javelin, and a silver medal for the high jump, but only after she was adjudged to have used an improper technique in a jump-off after tying with fellow American Jean Shiley. Van Natta Jr. believes that Zaharias could have won more medals had she been allowed to compete in a greater number of events. "I don't know about gold medals, but I think she could have medaled in probably at least five [sports]," he said. "She came in first place, just among obviously her American counterparts, at the event at Northwestern [University] that was the qualifying event for the Olympics, and she won five of those events. So I believe she could have been medaled in five (javelin, hurdles, high jump, 100m sprint and discus) easily if she had been allowed to." © Ed Maloney/AP Zaharias urges the ball into the hole on the 18th green of Chicago's Tam O'Shanter Country Club in the Women's All- American Golf Tournament in 1950. Beginnings. In the 1930s, it was difficult for women to earn any sort of living in athletics due to an almost total lack of prize money and sponsorship opportunities. "Babe was very much thinking about a way to make a living as a sports woman," Van Natta Jr. said. "And so she figured out that golf was one of the places that you could actually do it, even though a lot of the events were amateur events. But if you succeeded at them, she figured she could market herself and find some income that way." © Harry Warnecke/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images Van Natta Jr. believes it is "quite disappointing" that Zaharias' name isn't better known given all she did for golf. Zaharias took up golf with a "competitiveness that was beyond fierce," Susan Cayleff -- who authored two books about Zaharias' life -- explained. "She would drive golf balls until her palms bled and didn't set any kind of realistic limit on herself in terms of physical expectations," she said. However, her previous success in other sports led the United States Golf Association (USGA) to bar Zaharias from playing in amateur women's tournaments, compelling her instead to play in professional men's PGA Tour events. © AP Didrikson (right) works out with the New York Rangers players Murray Murdock (center) and Andy Aitkenhead, goalie, in Madison Square Garden in New York City in 1933. "They barred her in part because of a snob aspect," said Van Natta Jr. "She was seen from the wrong side of the tracks, she was seen as a poor woman, she was coarse in the way she carried herself. She started defeating these wealthier women, well connected women to the USGA, so they knocked her out for a while." Standing out. Whilst playing one of these PGA Tour events, Zaharias was paired with George Zaharias, a famous wrestler from the time. The two married in 1938, with George becoming her promoter and manager. With her husband's help, she became a "huge draw for the crowds," Van Natta Jr. notes, with her "chattering" nature making her one of the sport's biggest draws. She was said to have shown up at professional tournaments and announced to the media: "The Babe is here! Who is going to finish second?" as well as standing on the first tee before teeing off and announcing that she was going to "loosen my girdle and let it fly." However, her lack of femininity -- "telling bawdy jokes and swearing, sometimes spitting, drinking," according to Cayleff -- and the perceived "working class, gritty, sweaty" nature of track and field competition put Zaharias at odds with her more traditional female competitors. © Bettman Archive/Getty Images Zaharias became a world record holders in the hurdles even before she started playing golf professionally. And because she stood out from the rest of the field and wasn't the most gracious of victors -- "She would rub the people who she defeated, their noses in their defeat," Van Natta Jr. explained -- Zaharias consistently found herself on the receiving end of negative coverage from a predominantly male media. Cayleff describes Zaharias as being a "gender trickster" as she behaved "in ways that were absolutely contradictory to ideal femininity." But as a result, she was vilified in the press, with even her sexuality coming into question at times. "They took her uniqueness and what I refer to as her gender outlaw status," Cayleff said. "They take her behaviors and, particularly before she's married, absolutely craft her as a freak with newspaper headlines like: 'Mr., Miss or It?' or 'Which bathroom should Babe Didrikson use?' "They feared or presumed she was lesbian and then a particular term was coined in reference to her. She was called a 'muscle moll' or a member of a third sex. People were baffled and troubled by her gender presentation and particularly women golfers who tended to be of a more upper- class background and fancied themselves refined; they demonized her." Conforming. To counter the negative coverage, Zaharias recruited the help of Bertha Bowen, a Dallas socialite, who taught her how to "apply makeup, how to wear a girdle and get her hair styled," Cayleff explains. "She was the subject of absolutely vicious press after the 1932 Olympics where people were openly speculating and disparaging her sexuality and the like. And she understood, with the guidance of Bertha, that if she wanted to earn a living and keep her name in the public that she needed to seriously craft an image because who she legitimately was, was not someone that the American public was easy to embrace." © AP Babe Didrikson marries George Zaharias on December 23, 1938, in St. Louis. Even so, Zaharias' competitive nature meant that she found it difficult to fully integrate into typical golfing society. This didn't stop her from becoming one of the most successful women golfers of the time, winning 41 professional tournaments in total. And as one of the LPGA's 13 original members, she "planned and organized the golf tournaments, drafted the by-laws, supervised membership, (and) set up the courses" to help establish the professional women's game, the LGPA website explains. © Bettmann Archive/Getty Images Zaharias practises on Pinehurst's golf links for the exhibition match in New York. Although she did a lot for the sport for women, Cayleff contends that Zaharias was not a "self-conscious role model or promoter of opportunity for women in sports." Cayleff recalls an incident she found while doing research for her book when Zaharias threatened to withdraw from a tournament going into the final round, despite leading by several shots, because, in her eyes, the prize money was not enough. © AP Zaharias drives off to the 15th tee during her semifinals match against Jean M. Donald at Gullane Links, Scotland in 1947. "Babe was out for Babe. In an instance like that, she was an absolute impact on increasing the purse in women's golf, but it was not for the betterment of the sport or the betterment of the female athletes in general. It was for Babe. "It's a sort of mixed legacy. Yes, she absolutely impacted opportunities for athletes that came after her and athletes during her own lifetime, but she was in no way what we would call a feminist or gender conscious or concerned about equity in general," Cayleff said. "She was concerned about a good payday for her and let the chips fall where they may be on that." Legacy. In 1953, Zaharias was diagnosed with colon cancer and, at the time, doctors were not even sure they could cure her. However, in 1954, she not only returned to playing the sport, but won the US Women's Open in Massachusetts, her 10th and final major, by a dozen strokes, while having a colostomy bag strapped to her side. Zaharias chose to go public with her fight against cancer. This decision -- plus her remarkable comeback and her extensive work with the American Cancer Society -- helped change her perception in the eyes of both the public and the media, with Cayleff saying that it "heroized her in some ways to a new generation." "She was honored by President Eisenhower for her work with the American Cancer Society and did considerable fundraising for cancer research," Cayleff said. "The cancer work and the ability to come back and compete successfully was pretty much unheard of at that point. She was told she would never be able to compete again. And like she had done so many times in her life, she just tripled her efforts and determined she would prove them wrong." Her cancer eventually returned, and she underwent further surgery in 1956, ultimately dying from the disease in September of that year at 45 years old. Babe Zaharias. Babe Didrikson Zaharias is considered the greatest female athlete of the first half of the 20th century. She was successful in just about every sport she tried, including baseball, although it was well down on her list of accomplishments. She was born Mildred Ella Didrikson (sometimes spelled "Didrickson" and originally "Didriksen") in Port Arthur, TX in 1911 in a family of immigrants from Norway. The family moved to Beaumont, TX when she was five years old after a hurricane devastated Port Arthur, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction. She dropped out of high school because of poor grades, but she had a talent for sports that could not be denied. She moved to Dallas, TX to work for an insurance company as a secretary, having in fact been hired to play basketball for the company team, leading it to the Amateur Athletic Union national championship in 1931. She also practiced track and field and in 1932 set world records in 8 events, including the javelin throw, 80-meter hurdles and high jump. In that year's US amateur championship, she single-handedly won the team competition against a runner-up team numbering 22 athletes. In the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, CA, she won two gold medals, for the hurdles and javelin, and a silver in the high jump competition. She only lost that third gold medal because her last - winning - jump was discounted on a technicality in the rules. She had in fact qualified for five events, but women were limited to competing in a maximum of three that year. She was famous, but there were few opportunities for female athletes to earn a living at the time, so she sought all sorts of different options. These included playing professional pocket billiards (a form of pool), playing on a touring basketball team which she led, and also a stint playing baseball for the House of David team. Other sports she practiced (and mastered) include tennis, bowling, swimming and diving. She also tried her hand at vaudeville. On March 20, 1934, she got to pitch one inning for the Philadelphia Athletics in a spring training exhibition game against the Brooklyn Dodgers. She gave up a walk and no hits. Two days later, she pitched another inning, for the St. Louis Cardinals, facing the Boston Red Sox, but was less successful, giving up 3 runs on 4 hits before being relieved by Bill Hallahan. On March 25th, she played for the New Orleans Pelicans against the Cleveland Indians, throwing two scoreless innings and lining out in her only plate appearance. Even facing the highest level of competition in men's baseball, she held her own. In 1935, she settled on golf as her main sporting event and quickly became a legend on the links. Outclassing female competition by leaps and bounds, she was able to qualify for the 1938 men's . That is where she met her husband, golfer and pro wrestler, George Zaharias, whom she married later that year. She was the leading woman golfer in the United States (and by default in the world) through the 1940s and the early 1950s and would continue to play male PGA events over the years. As an amateur, she won the 1946 US women's amateur championship and 1947 women's British Championship, and won 13 consecutive tournaments at one point. She then turned professional and dominated the WPGA and its successor, the LPGA, which she helped found, for years. She became ill in the mid-1950s, being diagnosed with colon cancer in 1953. After undergoing an operation, she made a comeback in 1954, but the disease returned in 1955 and she passed away the following year, at age 45. As a golfer, she was represented by "Mr. Golf", Fred Corcoran, who was also the player agent of and . In 1999, the Associated Press named Babe the greatest female athlete of the 20th century and Sports Illustrated ranked her second on its list of the greatest female athletes of all time the following year, behind Jackie Joyner-Kersee. She had been named the Associated Press's female Athlete of the Year six times. Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias by Don Van Natta Jr. Price: $5.00. Quantity: 1 available. Experience the extraordinary story of a nearly forgotten American superstar athlete. Texas girl Babe Didrikson never tried a sport too tough and never met a hurdle too high. Despite attempts to keep women from competing, Babe achieved All-American status in basketball and won gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Olympics. Then Babe attempted to conquer golf. One of the founders of the LPGA, Babe won more consecutive tournaments than any golfer in history. At the height of her fame, she was diagnosed with cancer. Babe would then take her most daring step of all: go public and try to win again with the hope of inspiring the world. A rollicking saga, stretching across the first half of the 20th century, Wonder Girl is as fresh, heartfelt, and graceful as Babe herself. Title: Wonder Girl: The Magnificent Sporting Life of Babe Didrikson Zaharias. Author Name: Jr., Don Van Natta. ISBN Number: 0316056995. ISBN-13: 9780316056991. Location Published: Little, Brown and Company: June 2011. ‘Wonder Girl’: Tale of a superstar athlete, fighter. Despite attempts to keep women from competing, Babe Didrikson achieved All-American status in basketball and won gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Olympics. Next, she attempted to conquer golf. One of the founders of the LPGA, Babe won more consecutive tournaments than any golfer in history. At the height of her fame, Babe was diagnosed with cancer. She then took her most daring step of all: She went public about her condition and tried to win again with the hope of inspiring the world. Here is an excerpt from “Wonder Girl”: Prologue: Matinee at the Palace They began lining up for the early matinee at the Palace Theater not long after dawn. Blazing in block letters on the theater’s marquee were the names Fifi D’Orsay, a B-movie actress usually cast as a saucy French girl, and a musical group called Bob Murphy and the California Collegians. But no one had scrambled out of bed on a frosty Chicago winter morning for them. No, the people had come to witness the unlikeliest of vaudeville debuts, the invitation glowing high atop the theater’s marquee: “babe” Didrikson — in person — world’s greatest woman athlete. High above the Palace roof, a single gigantic word — babe — shimmered in golden lights, an electric carnival barker shouting the name into the sky. It was January 27, 1933, and the people had come to find out the answer to a peculiar question: Is there anything Babe Didrikson cannot do? Practically every sports fan in America could recite the highlights of Babe’s all-sport résumé: how she could run fast and far and jump high and long. They knew she could throw a nasty curveball and smash a baseball into the next county. They knew she was an all-American basketball player, outfoxing defenders with quickness and guile, head fakes, and stutter steps. She could swim with speed and endurance, scamper across a gridiron wearing pads and a helmet, and outhit and outwit the sharpest billiards hustlers. They knew Babe had stormed her way into the worldwide sports pantheon at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, winning two gold medals and a silver medal while etching her name in the record books. At the age of 21, just five months after her Olympic triumph, Babe suddenly had the audacity to spin the roulette wheel of her athletic career, letting it ride on a vaudeville stage, of all places. In those pre-television years and earliest days of films with sound, the vaudeville stage was still one of America’s leading entertainment tickets. Wedded to its tradition of quick-witted improvisation, vaudeville was renowned for its ruthless and often lethal unpredictability. It had a way of chewing up the ill-prepared or fainthearted, and the audience relished whatever disastrous moment awaited a jittery performer. Nothing was more intoxicating for a vaudeville crowd than the chance to deliver a harsh comeuppance to some ham-and-egger and then watch him or her slink offstage, leaving behind the footlights for some two-bit career unloading trucks or sweeping floors. Some in the audience no doubt hoped that kind of embarrassment would befall Babe Didrikson. Everyone knew she had earned a place among the biggest names in sports, right up there with Red Grange, Jim Thorpe, Bill Tilden, and Babe Ruth. But this seemed beyond her reach. Here, in the final somber weeks of the Herbert Hoover presidency, many Americans took comfort in the thought that Hoover was busy packing and would move out of the White House soon. President-elect Franklin Delano Roosevelt was assembling his cabinet and preparing for his inauguration just five weeks away. Many Americans doubted that FDR — or anyone else, for that matter — possessed the know-how to lift the country out of a deep ditch. The Depression was going to last forever, and, like a natural disaster, it discriminated against no one, handing out calamities in equal portions to street sweepers and bank executives, stockbrokers and stock buyers, dress designers and seamstresses, theater owners and theatergoers. The owners of the Palace were especially worried. Built just six years earlier to take advantage of all the shrillness of America’s giddiest and gaudiest decade, with embellishments designed to evoke the royal palaces at Versailles and Fontainebleau, this monument to Roaring Twenties excess was now struggling for survival. Formerly the tough-ticket showplace for headliners such as Mae West, Jimmy Durante, Sophie Tucker, and Bob Hope, the Palace had been relegated to featuring also-rans performing before a valley of vacant maroon seats. It seemed that everyone in Chicago was hoarding their nickels and dimes for the city’s new movie houses or staying home to listen to Eddie Cantor and on the radio. George P. Emerson, a Chicago advertising man with an eye for a good stunt, decided there was one woman who just might pump life into the Palace: Mildred Ella “Babe” Didrikson, a genuine American sports heroine and a vaudeville novice, onstage — for one week only! Sure enough, around the Palace that wintry day, there was reason for hope. By late morning, hundreds of people had formed a raucous three- block line stretching down Randolph Street. Rainy-day nickels and dimes stashed in coffee cans and beneath mattresses were pushed through the ticket windows. Every ticket was sold for the early matinee. At noon, the Palace’s wide doors swung open, and the boisterous crowd surged into the theater’s sumptuous lobby. Ticket holders paused to gape at the glittering designs leaping up the walls in gold leaf and oak. A few women stopped to touch up their hair and makeup in the oversized mirrors framed by sweeps of violet and ivory marble. After settling into their seats, audience members buzzed with anticipation: Why would Babe agree to do such a preposterous thing? Is she dead broke? Will she bomb? The prognostications were divided almost evenly along gender lines. The men guessed at the number of minutes that would elapse before Babe fell flat on her face. The women just smiled, hoping and half-certain that the men would be counting until kingdom come. With her eyes squinted into slits, Babe peeled back the maroon velvet curtain just enough to spy on the buzzing crowd filling the two thousand seats. She had always suffered pre-performance jitters, and manic stomach pains often kept her awake the night before a big athletic competition. As she peeked, she felt the usual riot of butterflies. Losing a competition was one thing, but nothing could be worse than facing an orchestra of ridicule from a sold-out vaudeville crowd. Babe inhaled deeply and, not for the first time that day, whispered, “My Lord, I can’t go through with this . ” “Two minutes to curtain,” the stage manager said. “Quiet, everyone . Babe, go to the lobby.” No time for second thoughts. Babe stepped out a side door and sprinted down a long corridor toward the front of the Palace. The theater lights dimmed, the crowd hushed, and the curtain raced skyward. The audience cheered until they noticed that Babe was not on the stage. A swirling white spotlight landed on a trim, middle-aged man dressed in a sensible gray business suit and sitting behind an ebony baby grand piano. The man introduced himself as George Libbey, a vaudeville veteran from New York City. A restless murmur rippled over the filled seats, and he responded with a be-patient half smile. The piano player asked the audience if they were ready to meet Babe Didrikson. The crowd roared yes. Without another word, Libbey started to play a fast-paced tune. The audience began to clap along with the music, and then a woman’s voice shot out from the back of the house. The music stopped, and everyone turned around in their seats to see the purposeful young woman striding down the left-hand aisle toward the stage. It was Babe, chattering in her unmistakable Texas twang about having just arrived in icy Chicago after a glorious Florida vacation. She wore a long green swagger coat, high-heeled spectator shoes, and a Panama hat. As she approached the footlights of the stage and the crowd got a good look at her, Babe’s chatter was drowned out by a lusty cheer. She beamed, waved, and grabbed an oversized microphone. “As I was saying . ” Babe said, and the crowd laughed. Babe was not glamorous, but her face was striking and intelligent, with impish hazel eyes, a hawk nose, and a slightly crooked, thin-lipped grin — all framed by closely cropped chestnut hair. She stood 5 feet 6 1/2 inches tall, weighed 132 pounds, and walked with a champion athlete’s loping gait. Unlike most of the great, blocky male athletes of her era, Babe was lean and smoothly muscled, and she glided with leonine grace. With her head held high, she moved with a striking economy of motion. Something about her steely confidence and her audacious attitude made it impossible to take your eyes off her. Slumped in a third-row seat, George Emerson watched Babe beam at the audience and thought, She’s the real thing. The piano player asked Babe a few questions about her trip north before playing the introduction to a popular tune, “Fit as a Fiddle (and Ready for Love).” Babe raised the microphone to her lips and began to sing, toying with the lyrics: I’m fit as a fiddle and ready to go. I could jump over the moon up above. I’m fit as a fiddle and ready to go. I haven’t a worry and haven’t a care. I feel like a feather just floating on air. I’m fit as a fiddle and ready to go. Her voice was smooth, on-key, and remarkably buoyant. She even dropped an improvised “boop-boop-a-dee-dee,” in an exaggerated baritone, bringing the crowd to its feet. Babe then kicked off her high heels and quickly slipped on a pair of rubber-soled track shoes. She peeled off her coat, revealing a red, white, and blue Olympic team warm-up jacket emblazoned with the initials U.S.A. and satin shorts. Babe bounded onstage and began running on a treadmill. Behind her was a large, white-faced clock attached to a black velvet backdrop. As she ran, the clock’s long arm kept time. Another woman ran onstage, jumped on a second treadmill, and simulated a race against Babe. The treadmills had been rigged, making it look as if Babe rushed through a white-tape finish as the winner. The crowd cheered as Babe smiled and ran a victory lap onstage, her fists thrust above her head. She then teed up a few plastic golf balls and used a nine-iron to smack them into the crowd, her grin widening as audience members lunged for the souvenirs. As the crowd pleaded for another trick, Babe craned her neck to look at a large sign on an easel at the foot of the stage. The sign usually carried the name of the current act. Today it featured her name. As she studied it with a puzzled expression on her face, George Libbey asked, “What are you looking at, Babe?” “Oh, I’m just looking to see who the hell’s on,” she said, and the audience laughed. Someone offstage tossed Babe a harmonica for the show’s grand finale. She played “Jackass Blues,” “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” and “Begin the Beguine,” her harmonica swinging and singing. She was onstage for just eighteen minutes, but it was long enough to establish her as vaudeville’s brightest new star. The next day, in the Chicago Daily Tribune, a stage critic named Clark Rodenbach wrote, “Friday afternoon was the ‘Babe’s’ first time behind footlights, and the girl from the Lone Star state took the hurdle as gallantly as she ever did on the track.” Babe was paid $1,000 for a single week of shows — four or five performances each day. It was a preposterous sum of money at a time when some women were making 6 cents an hour for muscle-wearying work. Just a few months earlier, Babe was earning $75 a month from the Employers Casualty Insurance Company of Dallas, where she worked as a clerk. Within several days, Babe’s show had become the most sought-after ticket in Chicago and the talk of the vaudeville circuit across the nation. Jack Dempsey, the former heavyweight boxing champion, sat in the VIP section for a performance. Babe was so popular that George Emerson scheduled vaudeville appearances for her in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Performing onstage was “beginning to get in my blood,” Babe recalled. In New York, Babe’s pay would increase to $1,200 a week. (She later claimed that her salary was going to be $2,500 a week.) But the money could not make up for the fact that the vaudeville stage was not the place for an athlete to make a living. Despite the show’s glowing reviews, the fit wasn’t quite right. Before long, Babe’s routine had become routine. Chicago audiences came to her show knowing the outcome, applause was all but guaranteed, and there was no longer even the threat of embarrassment. Babe began to complain about being forced to apply “that grease paint” before each show. Worst of all, she had to spend all her time indoors, either at the theater or in her hotel room. She missed the joy of competition, a longing that was underscored each time she ran a fixed race on a rigged treadmill against a stagehand. Showing results by author "Don Van-Natta-Jr" in All Categories. Texas girl Babe Didrikson never tried a sport too tough and never met a hurdle too high. Despite attempts to keep women from competing, Babe achieved All-American status in basketball and won gold medals in track and field at the 1932 Olympics. Then, Babe attempted to conquer golf. One of the founders of the LPGA, Babe won more consecutive tournaments than any golfer in history. But at the height of her fame, she was diagnosed with cancer. Babe would then take her most daring step of all.