BASEBALL THROW – Won AAU sanctioned United States championship in 1930, 1931, and 1932.  Her 1932 throw of 272 feet, 2 inches was the all-time record.  This is  the only track and field record which still is held by Didrikson.  The baseball throw event existed 35 years, from 1923 through 1957, when the event was abandoned.

     In earning her place on the 1932 Olympic team, the 5 foot, 7 inch , 115 pound girl qualified for five events.  She was allowed to enter only three in the actual games.

     Two weeks before the Olympics she had won the national women’s AAU and Olympics tryouts single-handled, with 30 points, in what has been declared to be the greatest single achievement in a series of events in the history of athletics.

     The Illinois Women’s Athletic Club, with 22 contestants, finished second.

     She entered eight of the 10 events, or all except the 50 and 220 yard dashes.

     In a field which included more than 200 athletes and teams which ranged from 15 to more than 20 members.  Babe hurried from one event to another in winning the shot put with 39 feet, 6 ¼ inches; baseball throw (for the third year in a row) with 272 feet, 2 inches; javelin with 139 feet, 3 inches, better than her own recognized world record of 133 feet,  5 ½ inches established in 1930; 80 meter hurdles in 12.1, and high jump with 5 feet, 3 ½ inches (tie with Jean Shiley).  In the 80 meter hurdles she won one heat 11.9, which was one-10^th of a second better than her previous accepted world record.

     She finished fourth in the discuss.

     Babe placed in seven events, winning five outright and tying for first in another, for her 30 points.  The second place Illinois CA had 22 points.

     In 1930, in the national AAU in Dallas, she won the javelin and baseball throw.  She broke the recognized world record in the long jump at 18 feet, 8 ½ inches but finished second to Stella Walsh, who then leaped ½ farther.

     In 1931, in the national AAU in Jersey City, Babe was the leading scorer with three firsts – long jump, baseball throw (world record at 296 feet) and 80 meter hurdles (national AAU record of 12 seconds).

     In 1932, she won the Texas AAU meet single-handed.

     In her career, Babe won 82 golf tournaments, including amateur and professional.  A pioneer of the  Ladies Professional Golf Association tour, playing in the days when tournaments were few, she won 31 events before her tragic death in 1956.

     When Babe won the 1954 U.S. Women’s Open on the long and tough Salem Country Club course at Peabody, Mass., she played the four round in 72, 71, 73, and 75 – 291, and this was within three strokes per round of the best that ever had been done by the men in either U.S. Open or the British Open.

     In 1946 and 1947, Babe won 17 amateur tournaments in a row.

     She won the United States Women’s Amateur (British Ladies Championship) in 1947, the first American to capture the British title which had been begun in 1893.

     She would become one of two players, along with Louis Suggs, to win both the United States Women’s Amateur and the United States Women’s Open.

     Babe won the Women’s Trans-Mississippi Amateur in 1946 and the women’s North and South Amateur in 1947.

     She twice qualified for the Los Angeles (men’s) Open.

     In winning the U.S. Women’s Amateur in 1945, she turned back the finest women golfers of the era, including Louise Suggs, Maureen Orcott, Helen Sigel, Dorothy Kirby and Peggy Kirk.

     In actual competition she beat Miss Kirk, Betty Jean Rucker, Miss Orcott (5 and 4), and Miss Sigel (3 and 2), and then smashed Clara Callender Sherman 11 and 9 in the 36 hole title round, a record margin.  Babe shot an eagle on the seventh hole in the last round.

    In the British tournament in 1947, she was not taken past the 16^th green and beat Jean Donald, the Scotland champion, by 7 and 5, in the semifinals.  In the final, she defeated Jacqueline Gordon 5 and 4, by knocking in an eagle on the 20^th hole.

      Babe was the leading money-winner on the Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) tour for four years in a row – 1948 through 1951.

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