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Tue Apr 30, 2024 10:31 am
chilliards wrote:{{ROUND 2}}
18. chilliards - Gus Zernial OF
Well, there's not many baseball players' last names beginning with Z.
Gus was born in Beaumont, TX on June 27, 1923 at a time when Beaumont was not a large city, yet. Just a number of small, individual towns. Gus was a star at Beaumont HS playing multiple sports almost as well as the most famous Beaumont, Texas HS athlete prior to Gus, who was Babe (Mildred) Didrikson born next to Beaumont in Port Arthur, TX on June 26, 1911, the day before Gus 12 years earlier. Babe also went to Beaumont HS and played multiple sports most notably in Track and Field at that time. Beaumont, Texas has a larger athletic history now, but back then it was just Babe and Gus.
In 1932, Babe was the Beaumont, TX Track and Field team attending the US women's Olympic trials in LA winning 5 of 10 events (tying for 1st in a 6th event) as the only member of her track team (which won the women's Olympic trials, of course). The Germans instituted a limit of three events for their 1932 Olympics in part to restrict Didrikson's potential to dominate the women's events by herself.
Babe was also a great baseball and basketball player. But, her professional claim to fame was golf. She met her husband, a professional wrestler George (The Weeping Greek from Cripple Creek) Zaharias on a golf course. She's the only woman ever to make the cut in a regular PGA event and is a founding member of the LPGA serving as president in the mid-50s. She won many women's tournaments before being diagnosed with colon cancer and undergoing surgery in 1954. One month after surgery, she won her 10th and last major balancing a colostomy under her dress in between swings. Her cancer came back and she died in 1956 at 45 years old.
Babe was singular at a time when women were not treated very well in the US (or the world). At the time, the public didn't know what to make of her personality. She was every bit the red-blooded fearless American maverick cowboy.
