It started with the horseless carriage, really. An ambitious bicycle mechanic named Charles Howard began to tinker with these toys of the San Francisco rich whenever they broke down, and from there he talked his way into receiving a dealership. But who wants a motor-car when there are horses that will transport people just fine? That was the thinking, anyway, until the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. Howard's machines were pressed into service as ambulances during the aftermath, and everyone began to realize the importance of these machines, and how useful they were for covering large stretches of ground quickly. As a result, more people bought cars, thanks to this growing realization and some snazzy PR by Howard, a born salesman if there ever was one. This made him one of the richest men on the West Coast. Being a rich man, he had dabbled in horse racing, since that's what wealthy people amuse themselves with(plus his friend Bing Crosby pestered him into it). In the mid-twenties his son Frank died in a horrific car wreck, which cooled his interest in cars a great deal. This hobby of horse racing - which he shared with his wife Marcela - was part of what helped him get over his depression. But the early horses were pretty awful. Until, that is, he met an Old West character called Silent Tom Smith.
Smith was a horse trainer just as the Old West was fading, and then it was discovered that his talents could be used for making racers go faster, too; in addition to breaking mustangs for various cavalry, rodeo or stock outfits. That probably saved his life. The horses he trained were about the level of Howard's - meaning the bottom of the barrel, at claiming races in little out-of-the-way lawless racetracks. Claiming races are where there's a set price set for all horses before the race starts, and only the winner is safe. Anyone else can be bought by anybody. Sort of the pawn shop of the "sport of kings." But his horses started winning, and often. That led to better horses and more wins, which led to his meeting Howard and getting hired.
Red Pollard was raised on the bush-league tracks, after being abandoned in Wyoming at one at the age of fourteen. He was eccentric for a jockey - he would quote Emerson and Whitman, or read Shakespeare all the time. Yet at the same time, he had an incredible grasp of the profane, so his talk was a weird hybrid of cultivation and vulgarity. So the reporters loved him, of course, because he usually always had a great quote or two they could use. And shortly after he was hired by Howard, a rock blinded him in his right eye, which he kept a secret from everyone, knowing that his jockey license would be suspended if it was known that he had basically zero depth perception.
Smith had seen this funny-looking horse on the claiming-race circuit and thought he might be something special, considering that Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, one of the foremost trainers in the world at that point, was training him, and that he was a descendant of Man o' War, one of the greatest racehorses in history. But Seasbiscuit(for that was his name) was lazy. So Fitzsimmons gave up on Seabiscuit, who then bounced around near the bottom of the barrel of the East Coast tracks, eventually was picked up by Howard after Smith spotted him again in a claiming race.
It took several months to get the woefully underfed Seabiscuit into racing shape, both physically and mentally, but in late 1936 he finally began to show the promise of his bloodline. So he was sent off to San Francisco's Bay Meadows track to spend the winter, readying for the richest race in the world, the Los Angeles-area Santa Anita Handicap, which paid the winner $100,000(and this is during the end of the Depression, mind you.) Handicaps are races where the faster horses are assigned more weight to carry, in order to make things fairer, and also to encourage betting. Most of the big races outside of the Triple Crown, like the Breeder's Cup, are handicapped.
The 1937 edition of "the hundred grander" took place with on February 27 with Seabiscuit pretty much a dark horse, as far the favorites went. He took on the favored contenders Rosemont and Special Agent, sailing into the lead on the backstretch...until he suddenly veered to the left, near the rail, killing his momentum and allowing Rosemont to come up beside him. The rail is the shortest way around the track, but also potentially the slowest, since the ground is usually worse down there. Seabiscuit loved to run along the rail whenever he could. But Rosemont crept up on his right side, leading to a photo finish....with the Howards' horse the second-place finisher. Maybe Pollard couldn't see Rosemont coming; because of his blind eye. But since he couldn't tell anyone that, he was left defenseless against the rousing onslaught of criticism which said he lost the race. That pretty much killed his reputation around the barn, adding to the conditions which made the Howard stable Pollard's only reliable source of rides.
The press invasion had begun, because America needed a hero, and the media determined that that hero was a scrawny Thoroughbred who got the wrong end of one of the biggest races in the world. While establishing himself as the fastest horse on the West Coast, he became the top American news item of 1937, topping even FDR and Hitler. At the same time, Pollard's reputation was still taking a beating. To fend off the prowling hordes of photographers and reporters, Smith began practicing Seabiscuit in secret, and frequently substituting his nearly-identical brother Grog in photoshoots. War Admiral won the Triple Crown that year, and was by any measure the best horse in the country. But a growing percentage of people thought that Seabiscuit could give him a run for his money. A match race was tried to be agreed upon, but nothing happened due to the East Coast establishment attitude from War Admiral's owner Samuel Riddle. Meanwhile, the weights the handicappers were assigning for Seabiscuit were enormous; putting greater and greater strain on his body. The two titans were scheduled to face off in the Washington Handicap in November at Baltimore's Pimlico racetrack, but it was raining heavily on the day of the race. Seabiscuit was a terrible mud-runner, because he didn't like to get dirty, for one thing, and he couldn't get any traction with the way his short stubby legs galloped. So he was scratched, and War Admiral ran away with the victory. They were also scheduled to run in the Pimlico Special, but it rained again that day, and so Seabiscuit was scratched - again. And War Admiral won - again. But Smith thought he found a way to beat War Admiral, though, if they ever could meet....
Seabiscuit, you see, hugely enjoyed tormenting whoever he was racing against. He liked to intimidate the other competitors, so much so that it was nearly impossible to find anyone else who was willing to work out with him, except for a filly named Fair Knightess. In the Pimlico Special, another horse had stared War Admiral straight in the eye, which freaked him out considerably.
In December, the Howard crew headed back home to San Francisco, spending the winter at the Tanforan racetrack. Things didn't go well. On December 7, Pollard was riding the Howards' sprinter Exhibit when the horse swerved suddenly away from something, right into the path of another horse called Half Time, impeding his progress. It was very unlikely that the move was intentional; but perhaps erring on the side of safety, considering that horse racing had a very shaky reputation, the track stewards suspended Pollard for a month. This derailed Seabiscuit's preparation, for Howard said if Pollard wasn't riding him, he wasn't racing. Fair Knightess was also scratched in a Christmas Day race, for good measure. War Admiral was named the 1937 Horse of the Year by the sportswriters. Then Riddle pulled War Admiral out of the Santa Anita, racing him in Miami at Hialeah racetrack instead against significantly weaker competition. So Seabiscuit missed several races waiting for the new year of 1938 to appear, and thus Pollard's suspension to be lifted. In the meantime, everyone went stir-crazy - the reporters, the horse himself, Charles and Marcela, Pollard, Smith... And the hundred-grander kept inching closer and closer without a race, first because the track secretary issued Seabiscuit an astronomical 132-pound impost, which everyone flatly refused to accept. When the secretary finally relented with a 130-impost in the San Carlos Handicap on February 19, he was finally entered and set to run again.
On the night of February 18, it started raining. So Seabiscuit was AGAIN scratched, but Fair Knightess was left in the field. Pollard was aboard the filly. She was running well - hanging in fourth most of the way - but up ahead of her an infamous horse called He Did sideswiped someone else, leading to a huge traffic jam that Fair Knightess plowed right into, with no way to slow down or swerve out of the way. She went down, with Pollard underneath her. Her hind legs were paralyzed; and Pollard's left side was utterly crushed. Both horse and rider hung uncertainly near death. A jockey named Sonny Workman was hired for ride Seabiscuit for the last prep race, but given conflicting instructions on how to ride him, he finished second in a dead heat at the wire. Smith forced Howard to fire him, which left them again without a jockey for the big race. Until, that is, Red's friend George Woolf (a much better jockey) pulled some strings to get out of his ride, and he explained in detail the way he would ride such a temperamental horse as Seabiscuit was. That convinced everyone; and so Woolf would ride Seabiscuit in the 1938 Santa Anita Handicap.
It started out dismally. A goon riding a hopeless longshot called Count Atlas repeatedly smashed into Seabiscuit at the opening furlongs, deliberately delaying his progress. Woolf knew the lawless tricks of unscrupulous riders as well as Pollard did; they raced on the same cut-through-a-wheat-field bullrings at the start of their careers. Sometimes, you had to fight back just to survive. This was one of those times. Woolf smacked Count Atlas' rider in the butt with his whip, which gave him a clear hole to advance through. That left Seabiscuit in twelfth, eight lengths back, with a little over half the race to go. The only option was on the outside of the main pack. And the main competition were nearly identical brothers, Stagehand and Sceneshifter. Stagehand was the hotshot three-year-old, the pre-race favorite for the Kentucky Derby. Seabiscuit caught up with Sceneshifter and rocketed past, leading the field, until Stagehand(carrying only 100 pounds, due to a quirk of scheduling) blazed up alongside. The horses hit the finish line together; for the second year in a row, Seabiscuit was in a photo finish for the win. And for the second time, he lost. It took a while to determine that, though - and everyone in the Howard camp was crushed. So was the public, who wanted their hero to triumph.
Pollard was able to start riding again in May, much to everyone's surprise. After much behind-the-scenes negotiating, a match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral was finally set for Memorial Day at New York's Belmont racetrack. Everyone went crazy with excitement and anticipation, but both horses didn't do very well in practice leading up to the big race.At the last second, Seabiscuit had to be scratched because of soreness in his front tendons, much to Riddle's relief. In June, Pollard was working out a horse as a favor to a friend. The horse went berserk; crashing into a barn and shredding Pollard's leg to the bone.
In July, with Woolf aboard, Seabiscuit won the Hollywood Park God Cup, defeating Ligaroti, the horse of Charles' friend Bing Crosby and Charles' son, Lin. A match race was arranged between them at San Diego's Del Mar track in August, and the press had a field day with it, promoting all the interesting angles - friends competing against each other, son against father, American horse versus an Argentine; Bing and Lin had even hired Smith's son Jimmy as their trainer. Seabiscuit won - barely - but there was a huge controversy that sprung up after the terrible brawling of Woolf and the other jockey. But that was eventually forgotten a couple months later, when in early October the news broke that the Pimlico Special, on November 1, would be run as the match race between War Admiral and Seabiscuit, for real this time.
Woolf and Pollard talked strategy in the hospital, while Smith worked to improve Seabiscuit's reaction time out of the start. War Admiral's trainer worked on improving his horse's endurance. A vast, agitated throng swarmed into the track, despite the race date being a Tuesday. This race was being broadcast live across the airwaves by NBC, and almost everyone - including President Roosevelt - was listening intently. Forty million listeners was the estimated audience. The crowd at the track was so tightly-packed that Clem McCarthy, the announcer, couldn't reach the press box. So instead he leaned on a portion of outside railing and called the race from there.
It was a thrilling race. They dueled neck-and-neck for quite some time before Seabiscuit's intimidation mode kicked in, and he sailed ahead to win by three lengths. The sportwriters finally named Seabiscuit the Horse of the Year.
In a race at Santa Anita in early 1939, one of the prep races for the hundred-grander, Seabiscuit ruptured a suspensory ligament in his front left leg, putting his career in doubt. The Howards entered another horse from their stable, Kayak, in the Santa Anita Handicap, and the Argentine horse(bought in the same herd as Bing and Lin's Ligaroti) won the race. For most of 1939, Pollard and Seabiscuit recuperated on the Howards' ranch, slowly mending from the injuries to their bodies as the mental scars those injuries brought along were washed away.
In January 1940, they returned to Santa Anita. The day of the race dawned on March 2, and all the other trainers were hoping that if their horse didn't win, that Seabiscuit would. It came down to Seabiscuit and Kayak; and for the last time, Seabiscuit found that extra reserve of acceleration. They finished one-two, and the public finally got the fairy-tale ending they were hoping for.
In 1946, Woolf's diabetes caused him to faint in the middle of a race. He was thrown, and died instantly. Three years later, there was a statue of him erected in the Santa Anita infield.
Smith faded into obscurity, despite winning the Kentiucky Derby in 1947 while working for an eccentric perfume baroness. He suffered a stroke at 78, and died several years afterward.
Red got married to a nurse named Agnes in the spring of 1939, and he and his wife had several children. He kept riding until 1955, then he worked in various tasks around a track in Rhode Island so he could be near the horses he loved so. He died in 1981, Agnes followed two weeks later.
Seabiscuit learned how to herd cattle in his retirement, and on May 17, 1947, he died of a heart attack at the age of fourteen. Howard's health was failing by then, he would die of heart failure three years afterward. Several fighter planes were named in Seabiscuit's honor, as was an ambulance for the British Red Cross. In 2003, there would be a movie made about him, with Tobey Maguire as Red Pollard.
I apologize for the length and detail of this review, but such intricate reporting and thrilling phraseology merited a quick summarization of all the wonderful content in these 400 pages.
#Wesley
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