Babe Didrikson Zaharias Trivia
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48 free Babe Didrikson Zaharias trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Babe Didrikson Zaharias trivia quiz covers the woman the Associated Press named athlete of the half-century and of the whole 20th century. The early questions deal with her Norwegian immigrant parents in Port Arthur, Texas, the childhood nickname borrowed from Babe Ruth, her prowess at sewing and the harmonica, the insurance-company basketball team that made her a star, and the day she won the 1932 AAU track championship as a one-woman team. The middle of the quiz turns to the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics and her medals in the hurdles, javelin and high jump, the jump-off technicality that cost her a third gold, the ugly train incident with two Black teammates, her spring-training innings for the Athletics and Cardinals, and her switch to golf: the 1938 Los Angeles Open, the three PGA Tour cuts of 1945, the amateur streak, the British Ladies title, the founding of the LPGA and the 1950 Grand Slam. The last questions cover her marriage to wrestler George Zaharias, her partner Betty Dodd, the colon cancer she fought publicly, the U.S. Women's Open she won a month after surgery, her death at 45 and the honors that followed. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia article on Babe Didrikson Zaharias.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Besides sport, in what domestic skill did Babe compete, making many of her own golfing outfits?
Sewing
Sewing was a point of pride: by her own account a dress she made took a prize at the Texas State Fair, though her biographers trace the ribbon to a smaller local fair.
Q 02Which instrument did Babe play in her vaudeville act after the 1932 Olympics?
Harmonica
Harmonica tunes and a run on a treadmill were part of the act, a brief turn on the vaudeville stage that turned her Olympic fame into money her family badly needed.
Q 03In which Texas refinery town, also Janis Joplin's home town, was Babe Didrikson born?
Port Arthur
Port Arthur is where her father, a seaman and ship's carpenter, had settled; he later rigged up a backyard gym for his seven children, with a broomstick and flatirons for a barbell.
Q 04From which country had Babe's parents Hannah and Ole emigrated?
Norway
Norway is also where her mother had been an accomplished skater, and the family name was spelled Didriksen until Babe changed the ending herself.
Q 05Babe Didrikson said she got her nickname after hitting five of what in one childhood game?
Home runs
Home runs, five in one game, made her 'Babe' after Babe Ruth in her telling, but the name may owe as much to her mother, who had called her 'Baby' since she was small.
Q 06What was the profession of George Zaharias, whom Babe married in December 1938?
Wrestler
Wrestler George Zaharias was a heavyweight villain of the ring when the two were paired at a golf tournament; after the wedding he became her manager.
Q 07Babe grew up and is buried in which Texas city, famous for the 1901 Spindletop oil gusher?
Beaumont
Beaumont is where she starred for the high school basketball team until a Dallas company hired her away, and where a museum in her name now stands.
Q 08Babe Didrikson took her first job as a secretary at what kind of Dallas business just to play on its basketball team?
An insurance company
An insurance company put her on its payroll as a secretary because paying her to play would have cost her amateur status; her real job was scoring baskets.
Q 09Which Dallas company basketball team did Babe lead to the 1931 AAU championship?
The Golden Cyclones
The Golden Cyclones won that national title with Babe as their All-American forward, while she was also winning national titles for the same company in a second sport.
Q 10As her club's only athlete at the 1932 AAU meet, Babe won which prize?
Team championship
The team championship went to a team of one: Babe scored 30 points by herself, eight more than a runner-up club that had fielded over twenty athletes.
Q 11Babe won 1932 Olympic gold in which race, lowering the world record to 11.7 seconds?
80-meter hurdles
The 80-meter hurdles final was so close that runner-up Evelyne Hall was credited with the same world-record time, and Babe, by her own account, won it by a nose.
Q 12Babe opened her 1932 Olympics by winning gold in which throwing event, with a record 143 feet 4 inches?
Javelin
Javelin was new to the women's Olympic programme that year, and Babe settled it with her opening throw of the Games, which a German rival then missed by 19 centimetres.
Q 13Why did Babe get silver after tying for first in the 1932 Olympic high jump?
Diving over the bar
Q 21Babe's famous unbeaten run in amateur golf began the year after which war ended?
World War II
World War II ended in 1945, and over the next two seasons she won at least 13 amateur tournaments in a row; she herself always put the streak at 17.
Q 22The Associated Press named Babe Female Athlete of the Year six times: five for golf and once for which sport?
Track and field
Track and field won her the 1932 vote, after her two Olympic golds; the other five awards were all for golf, the last of them for her comeback from cancer surgery in 1954.
Q 23Charles McGrath wrote that only which golfer was perhaps more beloved by the gallery than Babe?
Arnold Palmer
Diving over the bar was the judges' charge: her head crossed before her body, a style then illegal that she had used unchallenged all afternoon, and Jean Shiley took the gold.
Q 14Babe's three medals at the 1932 Olympics came in which three kinds of event?
Running, throwing and jumping
Running, throwing and jumping medals all came barely two years after she had first tried the sport, having joined her employer's new team in 1930.
Q 15Why did the AAU bar Babe from amateur sport months after the 1932 Olympics?
A car advert used her name
A car advert used her name, and that was enough: months after a heroine's welcome home, the Olympic champion was shut out of the amateur basketball season she had just begun.
Q 16Which famous bearded barnstorming baseball team did Babe tour with after the Olympics?
House of David
The House of David team came from a Michigan religious colony whose men were forbidden to cut their hair; Babe was the one woman, and the one bare chin, on its road team.
Q 17According to Babe, what have you got to loosen before you really let the golf ball have it?
Your girdle
Your girdle was her answer when people asked how she drove the ball some 250 yards; her athletic, full-blooded swing broke the mould of the polite ladies' game.
Q 18Why did the USGA bar Babe from amateur golf in 1935?
Pay for playing other sports
Pay for playing other sports was the stated reason, since she had barnstormed in basketball and baseball; she was not restored as an amateur golfer until 1943.
Q 19As of 2023, Babe was the only woman to have done what in a regular PGA Tour event?
Made the cut
Made the cut, and she did it in 1945; when Lexi Thompson teed up in 2023 as only the seventh woman to play a PGA Tour event, Babe's feat was still unmatched.
Q 20In 1947 Babe became the first American to win which championship?
The British Ladies Amateur
The British Ladies Amateur had never gone to an American until Babe won it at Gullane in Scotland in June 1947; that August she announced she was turning professional.
Arnold Palmer is the modern yardstick for crowd appeal; Babe earned hers by playing to the gallery, with wisecracks and exhibitions of virtuosity that delighted spectators.
Q 24What happened when Babe tried to enter the 1948 U.S. Open?
The USGA said men only
The USGA said men only and turned her entry down; it was 2006 before a woman, Michelle Wie, won a local qualifier for the same championship, falling short at the final stage.
Q 25Pitching for the Athletics against Brooklyn in March 1934, Babe Didrikson escaped the inning with what rare feat?
A triple play
A triple play ended her inning: the Dodgers, then a byword for blunders, hit into three outs behind her, and a Cleveland paper joked it was at least a new kind of mistake for them.
Q 26In spring 1934 Babe pitched an exhibition inning for which club, the "Gashouse Gang" of Dizzy Dean?
St. Louis Cardinals
The St. Louis Cardinals gave her the first inning against the Red Sox, who scored three runs; manager Frankie Frisch then pulled her, grumbling that a woman's place was in the home.
Q 27At the 1931 national championships Babe set a women's record of 296 feet in which long-discontinued event?
The baseball throw
The baseball throw was a women's championship event until 1957; her 296 feet beat the runner-up by more than 44 feet, and no longer throw by a woman has come to light.
Q 28When Babe set out to master golf, she was said to hit as many as how many practice balls a day?
1,000
1,000 balls a day was the regime, on top of hours of lessons, and she kept swinging until her hands were blistered and bleeding.
Q 29Which fellow champion was among the golfers who founded the LPGA alongside Babe?
Patty Berg
Patty Berg was among the handful of women professionals who set up the tour with her; Babe was its star attraction, and the crowds she drew gave women's golf a national audience.
Q 30Which fellow golfer became Babe Zaharias's close companion for the last six years of her life?
Betty Dodd
Betty Dodd was a young Texan golfer whom Babe introduced in public as her protégée; in private they were inseparable, travelling the tour together and sharing the Zaharias home until Babe died.