Seabiscuit: An American Legend

In the winner’s circle, the police cordon gave way and the reporters and fans pressed in again, wedging Seabiscuit and his handlers into the corner. Smith lifted a blanket of yellow chrysanthemums over the horse’s neck. Unperturbed by the near riot around him, Seabiscuit began gently plucking flowers off the wreath and eating them. Howard tugged a single chrysanthemum from the blanket. The crowd begged for souvenir blossoms. Smith pulled a flower out for himself, and in a rare moment of exuberance, heaved the whole blanket into the crowd. A happy yell went up, and the flowers vanished.

Kurtsinger steered War Admiral around the celebration and pulled him up in front of the grandstand. Kurtsinger sagged in the saddle. War Admiral had run the greatest race of his life, running by far his fastest time for the distance, but he had not been good enough. Conway pushed his way through the fans and emerged in front of his colt. He examined his legs, found them sound and cool, then turned away. A reporter asked him for a statement.

“No! No!” he said. “Nothing to say.” Dazed, he disappeared into the mob.

Kurtsinger smiled bravely and slid from the saddle. He uncinched it and pulled it from War Admiral’s back, then stood and looked at his horse for a moment. He stepped forward and whispered something in the horse’s ear, then walked away.³³ A groom threw a black-and-yellow blanket over War Admiral’s back. The police cleared a path for him, and War Admiral, his head low, was led back to the barn to the lonely clapping of a handful of fans. He would run in two more minor races, winning both, then go on to become one of the breed’s great sires.

Woolf slid to the ground and stood with one hand on his hip, smiling confidently, as Vanderbilt handed Howard the silver victory vase. Someone dragged Smith over to the mike, and he muttered something about credit being due to horse and rider. The final odds lit up the board, and Howard burst out laughing. The crowd applauded.

It took fifteen minutes to clear a path wide enough for Seabiscuit to get out of the winner’s circle. As Howard whirled off with the reporters, Woolf and Smith picked their way back to the jockeys’ room, trailed by well-wishers. They stopped in the doorway. Kurtsinger was already inside. “I hate to beat Kurtsinger,” Woolf said, “the cleverest jockey I ever competed against.” The reporters buzzed around him with questions about Seabiscuit. “He’s the best horse in the world,” he said. “He proved that today.”

Smith allowed himself a small smile. Woolf turned to him. “If only Red could have seen Biscuit run today,” he said.³⁴

“Yeah,” said Smith, his smile fading. “But I kinda think the redhead was riding along with you, George.”

Woolf went into the jockeys’ room. Down the bench, Kurtsinger was pulling off his boots and quietly crying. Someone gently asked him what happened.

“What can I say? We just couldn’t make it,” he said. “The Admiral came to him and looked him in the eye, but that other horse refused to quit. We gave all we had. It just wasn’t good enough.”³⁵

Smith went back to the barn to see his horse. He spent a few quiet moments with him, his arm thrown over his neck, the horse’s head by his chest. Woolf dressed and joined them. He stood by the stall door, watching Seabiscuit settle in. The horse felt good. He trotted around the stall, playing. Woolf thought he looked as if he hadn’t run the race yet.

The Howards packed up carloads of reporters and brought them all to their hotel room. In exactly two months, Seabiscuit would turn six, relatively old for a racehorse and an age at which most stallions were already at stud. The newsmen wanted to know if Howard was ready to retire his horse. Howard shook his head. Beating War Admiral had always been a secondary ambition. Charles and Marcela’s greatest wish was for Seabiscuit to win the Santa Anita Handicap. The horse would stay in training.

When Howard finally let them go, the reporters went home and filled out their ballots for championship honors. Seabiscuit was, at last, Horse of the Year.

Smith arrived at the barn at four the next morning.³⁷ The reporters, drowsing in the barn aisles, jumped up when they saw him. For once in his life, Smith couldn’t stop smiling. “That War Admiral is a better horse than I thought he was,” he quipped as he walked into the shed row. “I had been sure we’d beat him by ten lengths, and it was only four. It’s funny that nobody’d believe me when I said this horse could run.”

As he approached Seabiscuit’s stall, he fell silent, walking tiptoe. He gently opened the door and peered inside. Seabiscuit was a dark lump half buried in the straw, dead to the world. Smith stepped back and quietly closed the door.

“He’s earned his rest, all right,” he breathed.

Up in Massachusetts, Pollard greeted reporters with a rhyme:

“The weather was clear, the track fast

War Admiral broke first and finished last.”³⁶

David Alexander came in with congratulations.

“Well, what did you think of it?” Alexander asked.

“He did just what I’d thought he’d do.”

“What was that?”

“He made a Rear Admiral out of War Admiral.”

An envelope from Woolf arrived. Inside was $1,500, half the jockey’s purse.³⁸

PART III

Moments after injuring his left foreleg at Santa Anita, Seabiscuit is attended by Howard (far right) and his grooms, February 14, 1939.

(© BETTMANN/CORBIS)

Chapter 20

“ALL FOUR OF HIS LEGS ARE BROKEN”

In mid-November, after five months in bed, Pollard emerged from Winthrop Hospital, stabbing at the ground with his crutches and swinging his legs along. He returned to the world a changed man. His body was still wasted. His face was withered and old. His career was dead. He was homeless. And because he had no insurance, he hadn’t a cent left to his name.

The Howards asked him to come live with them at Ridgewood. Pollard accepted. His doctor drove him to the airport, and Agnes rode along with them. Pollard promised her that once he was established, he would send for her and they would marry. Agnes watched him bump up to the plane and wondered if he would live to see her again.

When Pollard arrived in California, he went to Tanforan to see the racetrackers again. His appearance stunned everyone. On the backstretch, his old contract trainer, Russ McGirr, saw the young man whom he had once purchased as a bug boy for a bridle, a saddle, and a few sacks of oats. McGirr burst into tears as they embraced.

Pollard settled in at Ridgewood. He was determined to heal and get back to riding, so he tossed away his crutches and tried to walk. It was a mistake. On one of the Ridgewood hills, he set his foot down wrong in a ditch hidden in the grass. The leg came down at an oblique angle and snapped.¹

The Howards rushed Pollard to the hospital Charles had built in memory of his lost son and called Doc Babcock, the same country physician who had tried in vain to save Frankie. In examining Pollard’s leg, Babcock discovered that the Massachusetts doctors hadn’t managed the setting and rehabilitation of Pollard’s leg properly. The leg would have to be rebroken, but this time, he felt, it would heal. Pollard knew what suffering lay in store for him but didn’t hesitate. He underwent the procedure.²

Soon afterward, Woolf drove from Maryland back to California, where he arrived at Tanforan to general applause. Someone told him that Pollard had again been hospitalized, and Woolf was crestfallen. He got back in his car and headed north to Willits, where he spent several days visiting with Pollard.

November rolled through Maryland, bringing with it sheets of ice.³ The track at Pimlico became a virtual skating rink, and Smith limited Seabiscuit’s outings to walks around the shed rows. The ice didn’t melt, and the horse began gaining weight.

On December 1 Smith walked out of the barn and stooped over the dirt racecourse. The track was glazed in ice. He stood there a while, quietly humming, “I Hear You Calling, Caroline.” Behind him, Seabiscuit fidgeted in his stall, fat and impatient, having not felt a saddle on his back for ten days. It was time to go. Smith went back inside and consulted with Howard. The next night, the trainer loaded the entire Howard barn onto train cars for a trip south, to Columbia, South Carolina. There they could train in warm weather and on safe tracks.

The choice of South Carolina was a strategic one. Seabiscuit was nominated for the Santa Anita Handicap, to be run in March, but Howard had also named him for the Widener Challenge Cup at Florida’s Hialeah Race Track. The races were to be run on the same afternoon. It is highly unlikely that he was considering passing up the hundred-grander for the Widener, but he thought the pretense might help in the touchy matter of weights. Santa Anita, undoubtedly because of Seabiscuit, had eliminated the 130-pound weight maximum for the handicap. The weights would be announced that winter, and given the results of the match race, the track racing secretary would obviously be inclined to assign Seabiscuit the biggest impost of his career. So Howard parked his horses between the two tracks and began playing one against the other, hoping to pressure Santa Anita out of giving Seabiscuit an excessive impost. Whenever he could, he made good use of his omnipresent entourage of newsmen. Sitting within earshot of a group of reporters at the Giants–Green Bay football game at the Polo Grounds in New York, Howard wondered aloud which race he would choose.

Even in the bucolic surroundings of Columbia, Seabiscuit could not escape the carnival atmosphere. Though the horse was not going to race in the state, carloads of fanatically devoted admirers drove hundreds of miles and swamped the town just to see him gallop in his morning workouts.⁴ Each time he cantered around the little training track, a happy whoop went up from his rooting section. Cameramen from the Universal Newsreel Company were crawling all over the town, creating a short-subject film of the horse’s life. People were flooding the track every time Seabiscuit showed his face.

Late in December, Seabiscuit overstepped in a workout and kicked himself in the left foreleg, dinging the suspensory ligament. His leg came up with a little swelling, so Smith backed off on the workouts. Again, Seabiscuit began gaining weight.

The reporters came and went. Seabiscuit, bandaged to the elbows, frisked them from over his stall door. Over and over again, Smith was asked why Seabiscuit was bandaged, and over and over again, he explained that the wraps were merely protective. Just before Christmas, the umpteenth local reporter from the umpteenth little paper eyed the bandages and asked Smith for the umpteenth time what they were for. Smith kept an absolutely straight face: “All four of his legs are broken.”⁵

The shocked reporter rushed to his editors and banged out a story breaking the news: Seabiscuit had fractured all four of his legs, and he would never run again. The ridiculous story might have lived out a brief life in Columbia had the paper not put it out on the national wire, thinking it was the scoop of the season. The next day papers across the nation were reporting the stunning course of events.

Up in Burlingame, California, Howard had just arrived from the East. Seabiscuit had elevated him to superstardom. He was mobbed everywhere he went. While he attended the races at Tanforan with Bing Crosby, the crooner found himself abandoned as fans and autograph-seekers smothered Howard. The owner settled back into town to await the hundred-grander impost announcement. He killed time by mailing blown-up match race photographs to reporters and taking out ads celebrating the win.

On the day Smith made his statement about Seabiscuit’s legs, Howard read the story in his evening paper, shrugged it off, and went to bed. He was by now all too familiar with false reports and knew that had anything happened to Seabiscuit, Smith would have been on the phone to him in minutes. But Howard didn’t sleep well. Reporters and distraught fans phoned his house all night long.

The next morning, when he emerged from the barn, Smith was enveloped by a herd of agitated newsmen. Smith denied again and again that the horse was lame. “Some dumb farmer of a reporter saw Seabiscuit with his usual after-exercise bandages on and drew the wrong conclusion,” he said.⁶ It took two weeks for the corrected story to make the rounds.

Howard’s squeeze play didn’t work. The track secretary at Santa Anita loaded Seabiscuit with 134 pounds. Howard swallowed hard. On the day after Christmas, Smith and Howard talked over the phone. The trainer wanted to bring Seabiscuit home from South Carolina without waiting for the Hialeah weights to be announced. Though the injury to the rapped leg was not serious—the horse was not even lame—he had always worried about that left front suspensory ligament and wanted to be at his home base if trouble developed. They had surely never seriously considered going to Florida anyway. Smith made his case to Howard. Howard wired him back: COME ON.

Seabiscuit would go in the hundred-grander. “One hundred and thirty-four is a lot of weight,” said Howard, “but Biscuit is a lot of horse.”⁷

The next night, the town of Columbia gathered in the darkness to see Seabiscuit off on what would be the final cross-country journey of a career that spanned 50,000 railroad miles. The whistle sounded, the fans shouted their good-byes, and the train ground forward. For five days it pressed westward, parting oceans of fans and newsmen at each stop.

Somewhere along the railways in the heart of the country, Seabiscuit slipped out of 1938. That year, no individual had known fame and popularity that was as intense and far-reaching. At year’s end, when the number of newspaper column inches devoted to public figures was tallied up, it was announced that the little horse had drawn more newspaper coverage in 1938 than Roosevelt, who was second, Hitler (third), Mussolini (fourth), or any other newsmaker.⁸ His match with War Admiral was almost certainly the single biggest news story of the year and one of the biggest sports moments of the century. “The affection that this inarticulate brown horse had aroused,” journalist Ed Sullivan would write, “was a most amazing thing.”⁹

Fans scurried all over the unloading platform as Seabiscuit arrived at Santa Anita.¹⁰ The train-car door slid open, and the dogs Match, Silver, and Pocatell bounced out, followed by Pumpkin and Seabiscuit. A host of newsreel and newspaper men pushed forward. A line of exercise boys and horsemen stood with them. Smith leaned out the door with the horse, eyeing the crowd with disdain.

“We’re back for more,” he said blandly.

Howard dashed forward. “Tom!” he practically shouted. “He looks grand. And happy new year!” He trotted up to greet the horse.

“Someone ought to put a shank on Charlie and cool him out,” a trainer cracked. “He’s more excited than the hoss.”

Smith and Howard walked off together, radiating pride. Seabiscuit, feeling his oats, bucked a little.

They had reason to feel good. Seabiscuit was sound and happy. He had no trace of lameness, and his speed was honed. The only hitch was his weight. He’d been idle in his stall for much of the time since the match, and his weight had crept up. Smith stripped him of his blankets on the morning after his arrival and walked him to the scales. Seabiscuit had gained thirty pounds. So Smith buttoned him into a bright yellow sweating hood and took him to the track at Santa Anita. Since the War Admiral race was over and the weights for the Santa Anita Handicap had been announced, the trainer was no longer trying to hide his horse’s workouts. Smith’s protectiveness had given way to confident magnanimity. “No longer will there be any secrecy to Seabiscuit’s moves,” he said.¹¹ “We figure he is the people’s horse, and we propose to train him in the open.” The people loved the idea. Every time the horse set foot on the course, someone would cry out, “Here comes the Biscuit!” and the track would come to a dead standstill.¹² Each of his workouts was attended by ten thousand or more spectators.

They were treated to a show. Smith had never seen the horse so good. His workouts were the fastest of the meeting. He careened around the turns with such reckless speed that Smith began to fear that he would be unable to hold his arc and would tumble over sideways. He took the horse back to the barn and pulled off all of his shoes. While Howard gathered up the old shoes to have them cast into silver ashtrays to give to reporters, Smith got a farrier to design special new turn-gripping shoes.¹³ “He’s been working so fast,” said Smith, “we’re afraid he’ll run right out of his hide. Already he has to run a bit sideways to keep from flying right in the air.”

While Seabiscuit steamrolled around the Santa Anita turns, buzzing the infield spectators and scaring the hell out of everyone, Kayak began to come into his own. Smith had known from the beginning that the big black Argentine colt was going to be a hundred-grander horse. As he had done with Seabiscuit in 1936, Smith entered the horse in the Handicap, but was careful not to show the racing secretary too much, running him just eight times, always in middling undercard races, six of which he won.¹⁴ Kayak improved rapidly. By the time they got to South Carolina, Kayak and Seabiscuit were waging bitter morning workout battles. Seabiscuit was always faster, but no horse, not even Fair Knightess, had proven so worthy a sparring partner.

Smith’s plan to keep Kayak’s speed a secret worked. The horse drew just 110 for the Handicap. With the weights out, Smith had no reason to hide him any longer. Kayak roared into Santa Anita with guns blazing, staging an overpowering performance to win a handicap prep race, just missing a track record, running with ears up, tail fanned out behind him. Coming into the 1939 Santa Anita Handicap, Tom Smith was armed to the teeth.

It was time to get Seabiscuit into a prep race, but something always intervened. He was scratched out of one race because the field was gigantic, and the post position hung him out so far that he was practically starting the race from the parking lot. He was scratched a second time when the rain turned the track slick. January became February. The Handicap was in March, and time was running out.

Two weeks into February, they entered him in the one-mile Los Angeles Handicap. Their luck held: On race day, the sky came up sunny and the field small. Smith spent the day sitting under the slope of the shed row roof. He was accustomed to the giddy ripples of fear that attended race days, but today they had a darker feel. Waves of uneasiness washed over him. Perhaps, he thought, he was giving too much work to an aging animal. The idea tugged at his head all afternoon. By the time he heard the rhythmic, rising chant of Joe Hernandez’s voice as he called the undercard races, Smith had begun contemplating scratching the horse once again.¹⁵

Out on the track, the racing secretary was surveying the crowd and worrying. Twenty thousand fans milled around the grandstand. Another scratch would be a disaster. Climbing up to the boxes, the secretary found Howard and told him that the horse’s fans mustn’t be disappointed for a third time. A few minutes later, Howard appeared at Barn 38. He and Smith talked about whether or not to run Seabiscuit, and Howard stressed that he didn’t want to ruin another day for Santa Anita and the horse’s fans. Smith could offer no concrete reason to scratch. He swallowed his trepidation and opted to run.

Smith led Seabiscuit to the track. Woolf met him in the paddock, and Smith gave him a leg up. The Iceman leaned down from the saddle and bent his head toward Howard. “We’ll set up a track record for you today, Mr. Howard,” he said.

Woolf broke Seabiscuit smartly, rushing to the lead. On his outside, Today, his old rival from 1938, hooked up with him. Down the backstretch the two horses flew, noses together. The duel stretched on: an eighth, a quarter, a half. The fractions clipped off. Woolf was going to be good to his word. The track record was coming down.

Countless times on that long Santa Anita backstretch Seabiscuit’s legs reached out over the track, stretching to gather up the ground, pounding down into the dirt, then folding up under his belly. With every stride, some two thousand pounds of force came down on the bones and soft tissues of each foreleg.¹⁶ Today and Seabiscuit, still moving at record pace, leaned together into the far turn. Seabiscuit switched lead legs, so that his left foreleg was bearing the greatest weight. With each stride, he pivoted on the leg, holding the line of the turn at close to forty miles per hour. Woolf had no idea that beneath him, something was about to go wrong.

Halfway around the turn, Today began inching away. Seabiscuit was fighting hard but slipping back. Today pushed a full length in front, then shifted down to the rail. Woolf angled Seabiscuit out to go around Today and gave him a whack with his whip. Seabiscuit surged forward, coming down heavily onto his left foreleg.¹⁷

Woolf heard a sharp crack!¹⁸

Seabiscuit took an awkward, skipping step. His head pitched downward. Woolf threw his weight back, snatched up the reins, and held Seabiscuit’s head up as the horse swung his legs forward and caught himself. The horse pulled himself together and resumed running. Woolf held still for several strides, feeling for lameness, but detected nothing. Perhaps, had Pollard been on him, he would have felt the slight catch in the rhythm, like a playing card clicking against the spokes of a bicycle wheel. But Seabiscuit’s stride was hard to read. Woolf felt nothing wrong. He thought Seabiscuit had simply stumbled over a rough part of the track.

Woolf backed off. He would catch Today in the stretch. He banked into the homestretch, swung out to go around Today, and made the biggest mistake of his career. He reached back and struck Seabiscuit across the hip with the whip.

Seabiscuit accelerated, and something gave under him. Woolf could feel it now, the jar in the stride: pain. He stood in the irons and began pulling the horse up. Seabiscuit crossed under the wire, finishing second by slightly more than two lengths. Today had set a record.

Seabiscuit reeled down the track. Woolf wanted to get his weight off of his mount’s back, but he was going too fast. If he jumped off now, Seabiscuit, obedient to equine instinct to flee pain, would probably tear over the track, exacerbating his injury. Woolf had to control the horse’s deceleration. He leaned against the reins. By the time he reached the turn, he had slowed the horse enough to bail out. Woolf kicked off his stirrups, leaned his weight on his hands, swung his right leg over Seabiscuit’s rump, and pushed himself into the air. He hit the ground running and hauled the reins back, dragging the horse to a halt.

He looked down at the leg. There was no blood, and the limb appeared structurally normal. Woolf led Seabiscuit forward a few steps. The horse’s head nodded, his left foreleg hovering in the air. An outrider, a mounted attendant assigned to catch loose horses and assist injured ones, galloped up and grabbed Seabiscuit’s bridle. Slowly, gently, the outrider led Seabiscuit back toward the stands. Woolf walked back alone.

Up in the clubhouse, Smith and Howard were running. Smith was ahead, slamming into people and shoving them out of the way. Howard followed him. They crossed onto the track and sprinted toward Seabiscuit.

The outrider drew Seabiscuit up before Smith. Seabiscuit held the leg up. Smith bent over it. Woolf stood and stared at his mount. His lips were white. Howard rushed up, looked at Seabiscuit, and then wheeled on Woolf. He was near panic.

“Why did you do it?” he shouted.¹⁹ “George, why did you do it?”

Woolf said something about having believed that the horse had simply stumbled. He said he had had no idea that the horse was injured. He watched them tend to Seabiscuit, then walked back to the jockeys’ room and sat down, heartsick. He called trainer Whitey Whitehill in, asked permission to be taken off his last mount.

A horse ambulance sped up. Smith straightened and waved it away. He needed to see Seabiscuit’s gait. Howard held the reins while a groom threw a blanket over his back. They started walking the horse toward the barns. His head nodded with every step. Howard fell in beside him. Smith dropped far behind, frowning and dipping his head to study his horse’s stride. He could see that it was the ankle that had gone wrong.

The grim procession filed past the grandstand. The shocked fans watched him go.

At the Howard barn, there was shouting and running.²⁰ Grooms dashed everywhere, rushing for ice, Epsom salts, and liniment. Seabiscuit was led up and halted. A groom dipped bandages in ice water laced with Epsom salts and wound them around the left foreleg. The Howards stood and watched, their faces fallen. Behind them, horsemen gathered in silent attendance. A groom walked Seabiscuit around and around the barn. The horse had run a mile at nearly a world-record clip, and injured or not, he had to be cooled out. Seabiscuit’s head continued to nod. Periodically, the groom stopped him and poured ice water inside his leg bandage while the horse slurped water from a bucket standing on a bench. Howard walked up and looked the leg over. “He never deserved such hard luck,” he said.

Marcela stood nearby. “The Handicap doesn’t matter,” she said. “He’s got to be all right.”

“Remember,” Smith told Howard, “he went lame at Belmont.”

“Yes,” Howard responded, “but I never saw him pull up that way. Never before.”

Smith had no response. A mournful hush fell over the barn, broken only by the long, low moans of a saddle pony who missed his absent stable companion. All evening long, the deep, sad sound drifted out from the shed rows.

When Seabiscuit had cooled out, Smith went over the leg. There was no disturbed hair, no broken skin. They led him back into his stall. He had stopped limping. A veterinarian went in the stall with him, and a ring of stable hands watched from the door while he worked. The veterinarian examined the leg, then painted it in liniment, packed it in mud, and wrapped it loosely in fresh bandages soaked in ice water. He emerged to the forlorn collection of grooms but offered no verdict. He said the injury needed time to declare itself. It could be as bad as a broken bone or a blown suspensory ligament.²¹ Or it could be as minor as a kick bruise. Whatever it was, the vet thought Smith was wrong. It was in the knee, he said, not the ankle.

Howard and Smith spent the night on their knees in Seabiscuit’s stall, taking turns pouring ice water onto the horse’s leg. Sometime in the night Seabiscuit folded up and sank down beside them. He drifted off to sleep, his legs stretched straight out. They kept working while he slept.

When Seabiscuit’s eyes opened in the morning, Howard and Smith were still there. The horse raised his head and rolled his weight onto his chest, preparing to stand. Howard and Smith held their breath. Seabiscuit pulled his haunches up under him, straightened his forelegs, and pushed. In a moment Seabiscuit was up. He stood normally on the bad leg and dove into his feed bucket. Then he lowered his head to snatch hay off the floor of his stall. It was his habit to lean onto his left leg when he did so, letting his right knee bend so he could get his mouth to the floor. They watched as he dropped his nose. His right knee bent, just as it always had, and he leaned to the left, onto the bad leg. Howard and Smith exhaled.

They led him out into the shed row and eased him into the walking ring. A crowd gathered to see him walk. Looping in big circles, the horse didn’t take a lame step. Then Smith asked him to turn sharply left, a trick he had learned to test the suspensory ligaments. The horse bobbled. Smith was right: It was the ankle, not the knee. The veterinarian took radiographs, which would take a while to develop. All they could do now was wait. The Howards spent their time sorting through myriad sympathy notes from fans, some of whom enclosed bottles of remedies for the horse. The X rays came back. There was no fracture. The injury was in the suspensory ligament. Maybe it was ruptured; maybe it was only bruised. The veterinarian said that if it was ruptured, the horse’s career was over. Time would tell.

Days passed, and Seabiscuit improved dramatically. Smith walked him every day and studied his gait. The horse had no trace of lameness at the walk, not even when Smith turned him sharply. After three days there was no sign that he had been hurt at all. A few days later Smith took him out for a long, slow, riderless trip around the track, leading him from Pumpkin’s back. Several hundred spectators came to see it. Howard stood by the rail and watched through binoculars. Again, the horse seemed perfectly sound and cooled out well. Smith began inching him back into work, giving him easy gallops. It appeared that he had only stung the leg, not incurred a deeper injury. Seabiscuit, they declared, was going to make the hundred-grander.

Meanwhile, the stable got a little insurance. Kayak won the San Carlos Handicap, nailing Specify at the wire and breaking the track record. And a curious dispatch came in from the San Francisco World’s Fair. Fair promoters wanted Seabiscuit to be an exhibit. They offered to build a special paddock and walking ring and give Howard a handsome cut of the 50-cent viewing fee they would charge spectators. Howard declined, citing a most unlikely reason: “We do not care to commercialize Seabiscuit.”

On February 23 Smith took Seabiscuit back to the track to continue his preparation. The horse sped over the track, level and even. Then there was a bobble. The rider abruptly stood up and threw his weight against the reins. The head nodded again. Smith and Howard didn’t need to say much to each other. They both knew.

Seabiscuit’s suspensory ligament was ruptured. Howard, his shoulders sagging with disappointment, stood at the clubhouse rail and told reporters that they weren’t going to make it.

Smith pulled himself together and went on. He moved the special safety door from Seabiscuit’s stall to Kayak’s. Howard brought a man to the barn to make plaster casts of Seabiscuit’s hooves for the production of souvenir ashtrays. The horse stood there calmly for an hour and a half as the man fooled with his feet. Howard stood by and watched. Neither he nor Marcela could muster any enthusiasm for the hundred-grander.

A week later it was Kayak, not Seabiscuit, whom Smith escorted to the track for the Santa Anita Handicap. Reporters queried him on his chances without Seabiscuit. “Watch my smoke,” he said. On the way out, he stopped briefly before Seabiscuit’s stall. Outside, a grandstand swollen with spectators awaited him. Several million people were tuned in to the radio broadcast. Buenos Aires was at a standstill: Kayak was Argentine.²² In the midst of the crowd at Santa Anita sat Charles and Marcela Howard, forced smiles papered over their faces.

A few minutes later Kayak cannonballed down the homestretch to win the 1939 Santa Anita Handicap. Marcela and Charles broke into tears. Someone asked Charles for a comment. “Oh, gosh, it was grand—” he said, his voice catching in his throat. He turned his back and hid his face among his closest friends, who ringed around him. “Kayak II is a good horse,” he whispered. “But gee, it wasn’t Seabiscuit …”²³

After the ceremonies, the Howards hurried from the track. That night they attended the Turf Club Ball. As always, Howard tried to get Smith to come, but the trainer never showed up. Santa Anita officials presented Howard with the traditional golden winner’s trophy, then gave him a cup commemorating Seabiscuit.

“I am extremely proud of the horse,” Howard said of Kayak, “but I can’t help saying I would have been happier had Seabiscuit been the winner.”

The Howards returned home. Marcela felt hollow.²⁴

Marcela and Charles Howard visit Seabiscuit at Ridgewood.

(COL. MICHAEL C. HOWARD)

Chapter 21

A LONG, HARD PULL

Agnes Conlon joined Red Pollard’s strange world on April 10, 1939. Back in Willits, Doc Babcock had finally set Pollard’s leg properly, and it was beginning to heal. He limped out of the hospital in early spring. Babcock sent him out with a stern warning: His leg would not stand the rigors of riding. If he went back to racing, he could be crippled for the rest of his life. He must never mount a horse again. Pollard smiled. “Then I reckon I’ll have to find somebody to boost me up,” he said.¹

Pollard took up residence at Ridgewood and immediately called for Agnes to come marry him. With no money to spare, they planned for a quiet, private weekday wedding and a modest honeymoon, and then Pollard would begin his long journey back to the saddle. Red wanted to be sure that she got the wedding gift she wanted most—a diamond watch—so he mailed her what little money he had so she could pick it out herself. Instead of buying the watch, Agnes bought an extra ticket west so her mother could see her marry. She had wanted to wear her sister’s elaborate wedding dress, but their pennilessness called for something less formal. She packed up a simple navy pinstripe suit, hat, and sandals and embarked on her journey to California.

She was in for a surprise. Pollard greeted her with a beautiful wedding, undoubtedly financed and planned by Marcela. The ranch was decorated for the occasion, and legions of Pollard’s friends, including Yummy, Spec Richardson, Doc Babcock, and a host of hospital staffers, were in attendance. Pollard, still underweight, was bundled into a double-breasted black suit, the left pant leg slit over his cast. Agnes was stunned by the preparations and a little mortified that all she had brought was the navy suit.

Under the sunlight in Willits, Agnes and Red Pollard spent their first married moments standing together, hearing the good wishes of their friends. Agnes smiled demurely, pressing the tips of her fingers into Red’s palm and averting her eyes from the Associated Press photographer who was covering the wedding. Red stood by her, his bad leg angled out.

It was a melancholy season at Ridgewood. Smith, preparing to take his Kayak east, vanned Seabiscuit to Ridgewood, said his good-byes, and left him in Pollard’s care. The horse was led into his new home, a handsome stall adjoining his own private paddock. He was not ready for retirement. He was bred to seven mares, including Fair Knightess, but it didn’t do much for his mood. Restive, he stalked the fences on his lame leg. Howard’s spirits mirrored those of his horse. In Seabiscuit’s racetrack days, Howard had made a habit of coming to the track every morning. Now he stopped going altogether.² He and Marcela spent much of their time at the stallion barn, petting Seabiscuit. At times Howard lingered there for several hours. The papers referred to Seabiscuit as “retired,” but Howard wouldn’t use that word. He was hanging on to the idea that somehow the horse might race again.

Red and Agnes returned from a honeymoon on Catalina Island, and the broken-legged jockey began the period of his life that he would call “a long, hard pull.”³ Red would go up to the barn, hitch a lead rope onto Seabiscuit, and head off into the meadows, swinging painfully along on his crutches while Seabiscuit limped beside him. “We were a couple of old cripples together,” Red said, “all washed up.⁴ But somehow we both had a pretty good idea that we’d be back.” Howard’s friends stood on the hills and watched them go, shaking their heads at the sad sight of two athletes whose bodies had failed them. Sonny Greenberg came out to look the horse’s leg over. There is no way, he thought, that they’ll get this one back on the track.

At first Pollard was too weak to go far, but he gradually built up his endurance. Hour after hour, day after day, Pollard and Pops walked together. When Pollard tired, he would lead Seabiscuit back and leave him off in the hands of his new groom, Harry Bradshaw. Bradshaw was a backstretch legend, a man with such magical skills at tending lameness that once, when a man was negotiating to buy an elite horse in Bradshaw’s care, he refused to take the horse unless Bradshaw was part of the bargain. Smith had made a special effort to get him out to the farm and had given him detailed instructions on how to care for the horse. Bradshaw took his job seriously, staying at the barn day and night to nurse Seabiscuit’s ankle.

Agnes and Red began their marriage. Red taught her to drive a car along the roads lined with redwoods. He took her out to the barns, helped her up on the backs of the horses, and watched her ride. For Agnes, every moment was stolen time. Red was so frail that she feared his life was still in danger. She discovered that he was already deep into alcoholism. And she learned how he tortured his body to make weight. Horse racing had made him a cripple and an addict. And now he was going back to it.

Slowly, painfully, horse and rider healed.⁵ Pollard was soon off his crutches and took to leaning on a cane. He wore weighted shoes to strengthen his wasted leg muscles. The bones of his leg were so weak that he needed to wear a fur-lined metal brace to prevent them from buckling, but they held up. Seabiscuit’s lameness at the walk disappeared. Howard began slipping out to the barn in the morning with Pollard, and one day when the urge was too strong they got out a stock saddle and cinched it on Seabiscuit. Howard gently lifted Pollard into the saddle. The redhead was far too weak to hold the horse, so Howard swung aboard a pinto horse named Tick Tock, took Seabiscuit’s lead rope, and led the two around the meadows, gradually increasing the length and speed of each outing. Soon, Howard had a little track of three eighths of a mile cut out of the flat valley land. He began leading Seabiscuit and Red onto it for long, slow walks.

Seabiscuit was starting to feel fine. Within hours of his birth, he had known how to run, and speed had been the measure of his life ever since. He knew what the track was for, and it wasn’t walking. He was frantic to run. His whole body gathered up behind the bit, and he skittered around like a downed electrical wire, begging Pollard to turn him loose. Howard had left a bushy gully in the center of his makeshift track, and one morning the sight of the horses and men spooked the deer hiding out inside. They bolted for the hills, streaking past Seabiscuit. “Good Lord!” Howard remembered later. “The first time he spotted one he thought the race was on!” Seabiscuit yanked the reins loose and bounded off after the deer, imitating the animals’ pogo-stick strides. Pollard somehow hung on, Howard kept his grip on the lead rope, and they pulled Seabiscuit to a halt.⁶

A few hundred miles south, Tom Smith sat in the sun by the barns at Hollywood Park. His eyes were trained on Kayak, who hung his head out of his half door, surveying the backstretch.

Smith was in the midst of a trying season. First Seabiscuit was injured. Then Kayak was hurt in a freak accident when something blew across the track and caused him to bolt. He came down wrong, gashed himself badly, and wound up out of training. After a period of convalescence, the horse returned to racing, only to be injured again. All Smith had to cling to was a wild thought that Seabiscuit might someday return.

Smith’s eyes played over Kayak. A reporter walked up.

“Wouldn’t it be great,” the newsman said, “if the Biscuit could stage a comeback?”

Smith slid up in his chair.

“I suppose,” he said, an edge to his voice, “you think he won’t come back?”

The reporter, flustered, stammered out something about the rarity of successful comebacks.

Smith stood up. “The Biscuit will come back,” he said in a voice more emotional than he meant it to be.⁷ “He’ll come back and fool the whole turf world.”

Smith seemed uncomfortable. He drew himself together and smiled at the reporter.

Kayak continued to gaze out the door.

Pollard had learned a thing or two about training from Smith, and he managed Seabiscuit’s rehabilitation carefully. By early summer, walking turned to a gentle canter, first a mile, then two, then three. Seabiscuit kept pulling, but Pollard never gave in; the turns on the little track were too tight, the leg too delicate. Howard walked out to the barn every morning with a quiver in his gut, afraid that they might make a mistake and reinjure Seabiscuit. But the horse kept getting stronger and sounder. An idea was working around in the heads of everyone at Ridgewood. Howard and Smith might be right. Seabiscuit might make it back to the races. Outside the ranch, it was considered an absurd idea. Inside, it seemed somehow possible.

Everyone went to work. Bradshaw began strapping Seabiscuit into a fur-lined muzzle to get the extra pounds off him, and they weighed the horse every week. When a groom was caught sneaking carrots to Seabiscuit, Pollard ran him off with a pitchfork and the groom was summarily fired. Seabiscuit took to stomping and bellowing for food day and night. His moans rang off the barn walls and worked on everyone’s nerves, but no one gave in. “The whole ranch became centered on the job,” Howard said.⁸ “Even the pigs quit grunting at him and the chickens kept out of his way.”

By summer’s end, Seabiscuit had made surprising progress. He was now soundly negotiating five miles a day. Beneath Pollard, there was something different. Seabiscuit was developing a new stride.⁹ No longer did he stab out with a foreleg as he ran, producing the curiously choppy duck-waddle gait that so many observers had mistaken for lameness. He now folded his legs up neatly under him when airborne, directing all of his motion forward and back, not side to side. It was a beautiful, smooth gait, and probably a sounder one. Seabiscuit was in fighting trim and hard as rock, and Pollard, though still a wreck, was at least strong enough to handle him.

“Our wheels went wrong together, but we were good for each other,” he said.¹⁰ “Out there among the hooting owls, we both got sound again.”

On her trips to the barn, Marcela also noticed something new. Seabiscuit was pacing around his stall, as he had done in his days with Fitzsimmons. When he paused, he directed his gaze at the horizon, distracted. Howard saw that look and knew what it meant. “You knew he wanted to race again,” he said, “more than anything else in the world.”¹¹

In the fall Howard called Smith in. The trainer motored up to the ranch and silently watched as Seabiscuit, looking blocky in his winter coat, was galloped in front of him. Smith scrutinized the horse from head to toe. He was deeply impressed with the work Pollard had done with him.

They were all thinking the same thing. Seabiscuit was ready to take another run at the Santa Anita Handicap.

The idea was outlandish. The comeback, if successful, would be unprecedented.

No elite horse had ever returned to top form after such a serious injury and lengthy layoff.¹² Few great horses have competed beyond age five or through more than forty races; in a couple of months Seabiscuit would be a bewhiskered seven years old, more than twice the age of many of the horses he would be facing, and he had already raced eighty-five times. When word got out, the Howard team would be widely ridiculed. But Smith, Howard, and Pollard believed he could do it.

Pollard wanted to go with him. He had never lost his belief that he could ride in races again, though no one who looked at him as he leaned on his cane, his leg grotesquely thin and discolored, his body weak and emaciated, would have agreed with him.

His desire became urgency. Agnes began experiencing unusual symptoms and paid a visit to her doctor. He told her that she was pregnant. She thought he had to be wrong. She was certain that Red was too weak to be capable of fathering a child.¹³ But the doctor’s verdict was unequivocal: Agnes was going to have a baby.

For Pollard, the news was at once wonderful and terrifying. He was still living on the Howards’ good graces. He had no money, no home, no career. He had only Seabiscuit. He told Howard he wanted to go back to the track with the horse. Howard was frightened for him. Doc Babcock had said that Pollard was never to go near a horse again. One bump, one twist, and he could lose his ability to walk forever. All Howard would agree to was to let him come along. On a cool day in the late fall of 1939, Pollard and Seabiscuit set out for Santa Anita to chase the one dream that had eluded them.

At Seabiscuit’s stall, Pollard awaits Howard’s decision, December 1939.

(USC LIBRARY, DEPARTMENT OF SPECIAL COLLECTIONS)

Chapter 22

FOUR GOOD LEGS BETWEEN US

Charles Howard knew something about making an entrance. In the predawn hours of one December morning in 1939 the Seabiscuit crew came whooping and hollering into Santa Anita in a manner only a man as spectacular as Howard could have pulled off. Their vehicle was a streamlined “palace” horse van painted in Howard crimson and white and featuring two musical horns, eight headlights, fourteen cigar lighters, and a luxurious stall with kapok-stuffed walls. The back doors dropped open, and Smith and Seabiscuit emerged. Smith took the horse straight down the shed rows, pulled him up at the Kaiser Suite, and evicted Kayak. “Have to give the better horse preference,” he grunted. The first fans arrived at daybreak. All morning long, hundreds of them streamed into Barn 38 to greet the old warrior. Among them was Woolf. Seabiscuit came to the door and rubbed his face against the jockey’s fedora.

Smith, knowing that returning the horse to racing was controversial, took the offensive with the press. With a host of newsmen congregated outside, he led Seabiscuit out and stood him in an open space between the barns. He announced that anyone who was suspicious of the horse’s soundness could step right up and have a look. He asked the photographers to take close-up shots of the horse’s left ankle. “If anybody thinks I am training a cripple,” he said, “I want these pictures definitely to prove otherwise.”¹

The 1940 hundred-grander was on March 2, giving Smith about three months to prepare the horse. He got to work. He had Seabiscuit’s heavy winter coat clipped off and took him to the scales. The horse weighed in at 1,070, twenty pounds too much. Smith was worried that the load would strain the leg, so he pulled out the yellow sweating hood and gave the horse slow gallops. In the barn they strapped the horse into a muzzle each evening to stop him from eating his bedding. Seabiscuit put up a fight, but the groom managed to get it on without losing any fingers. Gradually, the weight vanished from the horse’s ribs.

On December 19 Smith felt the horse was ready to be tested. He tacked him up and took him out for his first fast workout since the injury. As the grooms watched and fretted, Smith waved the exercise rider on. Venting months of frustration, Seabiscuit burned rubber off the line and sped past the grandstand. He came back perfectly sound. The grooms sagged with relief.

The mood didn’t last long. Late that afternoon Smith went into the track secretary’s office to see the weight postings for the Santa Anita Handicap. He couldn’t believe his eyes: Though he had been idle for a year, Seabiscuit had been assigned 130 pounds; Kayak, 129. As he ran his eyes down the list, the highest number Smith saw for any other horse was 114.

Smith lit up like a firecracker. He stormed around the office and shouted about the irresponsibility of the handicapper. A gathering of horsemen gaped at him. Silent Tom’s tirade lasted a full five minutes. After giving vent to his anger, he pulled himself together and stalked off.

“So what?” he grumbled. “We’ll run one-two anyway.”²

The year 1940 rolled in with heavy black clouds. Snow brushed over the tips of every peak up in the San Gabriels, but down on the track there was only rain and slippery mud. Smith tucked Seabiscuit away in the barn and waited for a break in the weather. It didn’t come. Day after day, the rains kept falling. Over and over again, Smith postponed Seabiscuit’s workouts. He spent every minute with the horse, sleeping in the barn, watching him eat, personally wrapping his legs in stall bandages, but he wouldn’t let him out to work. Pressure began to build. Seabiscuit was entered in several races, and each time he had to be scratched. The crowds booed and the press picked at Smith and Howard. “If Seabiscuit is scratched again,” wrote a reporter, “he will be an etching.” The whole barn was in a funk. Kayak was trounced in his first race of 1940. Not a single Howard runner won.

Seabiscuit may have been trapped in the barn, but his idleness didn’t hurt his celebrity. He was the hottest name in the nation. Fans thronged into the Uptown Theater in Pasadena to see The Life of Seabiscuit, a compilation of the horse’s newsreel footage. The film relegated a much anticipated Jimmy Stewart movie to second billing. The stylish “Seabiscuit” ladies’ hat, with a fishnet veil, was all the rage in department stores on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue. The hat was the first of myriad lines of signature products: toys, commemorative wastebaskets, two varieties of oranges. All kinds of businesses from hotels to laundries to humor magazines were using the horse’s likeness in their ads. The horse even had his own parlor game, the first of at least nine.

When Pollard hung up his tack in the Santa Anita jockeys’ room, he found the riding colony in an uproar. Just before the track’s season had begun in December, Pollard’s old colleague Tommy Luther had sat down for coffee in the Santa Anita golf club with a handful of other riders. They began chatting about the alarming number of jockeys who had been wiped out by injuries, including Pollard. Luther had never gotten over the death of poor little Sandy Graham, thrown from a horse Luther was to have ridden. He had an idea: Why not ask each rider to contribute 10 cents for every ride, plus $20 a year, to a community fund that could help injured riders? The five riders liked the idea and agreed to have a second meeting at the golf club, each man bringing two riders with him.

The next morning, when Luther arrived to pick up his jockey’s license for the track’s winter meet, he was called before old Pink Whiskers, steward Christopher Fitzgerald, who asked about the meetings. Luther explained his fund idea. Pink Whiskers accused him of starting a union. Luther denied it. Pink Whiskers promptly banned him from riding for a full year for his “defiant and threatening attitude.”³ The ban was upheld everywhere in the country.

Luther refused to back down. He rallied the jockeys around him, and each week the riders streamed across the street to the golf club. Woolf was there, as were Spec Richardson and Harry Richards. But Pollard refused to go.⁴ No man in the riding colony needed a community fund more. He had twice narrowly escaped dying in riding accidents that had landed him in the hospital for months on end, wiped him out financially, and caused near crippling injury. Now he was forcing himself back into the saddle at the risk of his leg because he hadn’t a cent to his name to support a coming baby. Red Pollard should have been the community fund’s poster boy.

But all he could think of was Charles and Marcela Howard. With the jockeys’ efforts widely perceived as the formation of a union against stewards, owners, and trainers, Pollard feared that he might offend the Howards by crossing the street and walking into the golf club. To the exasperation of his fellow riders, Pollard stayed away.

For Pollard, it was a season of incredible strain and humiliation. Before arriving at Santa Anita, he had tried to resume his career at Tanforan. At first he found a few trainers who wanted to help him get back on his feet. The result was nearly catastrophic. He had come away hopping from two horses, in obvious pain. He had looked very weak, and everyone, including the newsmen, had noticed. And he hadn’t won a race.

He came down to Santa Anita resolving to do better. Yummy, still as fiercely loyal as he had been back in their Thistle Down days, joined up with him again and promised to get him mounts.⁵ Red and Agnes settled into a little rental house near the track. Pollard built his strength, hit the sack early, and rose well before dawn to head back to the track. But his declarations of readiness were received with awkward silence. Everyone knew what had happened at Tanforan. Yummy scoured the backstretch for trainers willing to put the Cougar on their horses. He didn’t find one. Every trainer on the grounds believed Pollard was finished, and no one wanted to be responsible for crippling him.

The biggest disappointment was Howard. Even when he had been at the top of his game with Seabiscuit, Pollard had never established himself with any other major stable, so Howard was his only real hope. Smith wanted Pollard on the horse for the hundred-grander. Howard wanted to grant the redhead his wish, but both he and Marcela were tormented by the thought of what it would cost him. He let Pollard ride Seabiscuit in slow gallops but kept him off the horse’s back for most of his fast workouts. At first, Howard would not allow Pollard to ride in races on any of his horses. Then, one afternoon in late January, he finally relented and assigned the jockey the race mount on a filly. But when the track came up muddy, Howard abruptly snatched Pollard off the horse and put someone else in his place, fearing that the filly might slip and jar the jockey’s leg.⁶ From then on, when jockeys’ names were posted for Howard’s horses, Pollard was never among them. In a sport in which men are measured by their toughness, he must have felt humiliated.

Pollard was left with nothing to do. His anguish deepened. He sat in Pops’s stall, thinking about Agnes’s pregnancy and wondering how he would find the money to support the baby. He told Howard again and again that he was fit to ride in the hundred-grander, but got nowhere.

The truth was that Pollard couldn’t even convince himself. The leg didn’t feel right in his boot. The bones felt like matchsticks. He was sure that it wouldn’t take more than a light bump to shatter them. A secret terror began to rack his mind: What if Howard let him ride and his leg snapped in midrace?⁷

And then there was Woolf. Seeing that Howard might bar Pollard from riding, Smith had started letting Woolf gallop Seabiscuit. There was widespread speculation that either Woolf or Buddy Haas, Kayak’s jockey, would be signed on to ride Seabiscuit in the big race. Almost everyone at Santa Anita thought that anyone but Pollard should ride.⁸ Pollard called his naysayers “my left-handed rooting section.”⁹

Pollard watched Woolf canter off on Pops. Despair rushed up under him like a riptide. “And none so poor,” he muttered to a reporter, echoing Julius Caesar, “to do me reverence.”¹⁰

Pollard began to crumble under the pressure. He had become a binge drinker. He made a point of temperance during working hours—“Never let it be said,” he once told his friend Bill Buck, “that Pollard was drinking when he was riding”—but during off-hours he sometimes drank heavily.¹¹ “Tonight’s the night,” he once shouted as he ran into Buck’s apartment near the end of a race season, “the Cougar howls!” When he drank, he endured monstrous hangovers and appeared to suffer from delirium tremens. “I got to wear glued shoes when I’m hung,” he said, “because I shake the nails out of the other kind.”¹²

Yummy was frightened for him.¹³ If Pollard began drinking too heavily, he would lose any chance he had to ride Seabiscuit. Yummy did everything he could to keep the jockey from going on benders. He asked Pollard to come stay with him at the Turkish baths. Pollard refused. So Yummy shadowed him everywhere. He made a point of knowing exactly where his client was twenty-four hours a day. He asked David Alexander to stay around Pollard as much as possible to keep him from overimbibing. In an apparent bargain to keep him dry until the race, Yummy made a deal with the rider. If Pollard won the hundred-grander, Yummy promised to sneak him a swig of bow-wow wine in the winner’s circle.

Pollard wasn’t the only one feeling the strain. Smith was racked with anxiety. “His whole life,” recalled Sonny Greenberg, “was gathered around Seabiscuit.” Howard, too, was at the breaking point. Over a five-year partnership, these two radically different men with often conflicting priorities had forged a surprisingly harmonious relationship, but decisions about Seabiscuit’s racing and training schedule had repeatedly caused tension between them. When under pressure, each man had a tendency to become more controlling, and never was the pressure higher than in the winter of 1940.

One morning at Santa Anita, Howard pushed Smith hard to take a course with Seabiscuit that Smith was not prepared to take, apparently to rush his very conservative training regimen. In front of a barnful of horsemen, Smith laid down the law. Let me train my horse as I see fit, he snapped, or find a new trainer.¹⁴ Everyone within earshot froze, listening for Howard’s response.

Howard said nothing and walked away.

January waned, and still Seabiscuit had not raced. Whichcee, Heelfly, all his rivals were preparing well. The rains didn’t relent. Smith couldn’t wait any longer. He took Seabiscuit and Kayak out for a hard workout on the training track. For once, Pollard was allowed to ride Seabiscuit for speed. In a driving rainstorm that sent everyone running, Seabiscuit and Kayak blistered six furlongs in 1:13 with Pollard leaning all the way back against the reins, his feet “on the dashboard.” Horse and jockey returned intact. A few days later Smith sent Seabiscuit back out again, and again his time was superb, 1:12⅖ for six furlongs. Pollard said the horse had never been sounder.

After the workout, Smith entered Seabiscuit in the San Felipe Handicap, scheduled for January 30. Pollard awaited a decision on whether or not he would be in the irons. Smith announced that Pollard would ride. But Howard added an escape clause: Pollard would ride only if he was fit to do so. If he wasn’t, Howard said, Woolf had the mount. He said nothing about the hundred-grander, now just a month away.

Woolf and Pollard fell into the first crisis of their friendship. To Pollard, the mount on Seabiscuit could not have been more important. The horse meant financial rescue, the ability to meet his responsibilities as father and husband, professional redemption, and the end of a long, public humiliation. But Woolf must have burned with the frustration of the nose loss in 1938, and the guilt for having possibly exacerbated the horse’s injury in 1939. In announcing publicly that it was Woolf or Pollard, Howard had inadvertently set the two against each other.

Somewhere along the backstretch, Woolf and Pollard had a bitter argument over Seabiscuit, nearly coming to blows.¹⁵ When they walked away, their friendship was broken.

January 29 dawned sunny and clear. Howard started the long walk to the track offices to enter his horse in the next day’s San Felipe. As he ambled around the course, the barometer in the track secretary’s office leaned toward rain. He entered the horse. Seeing that Seabiscuit was in, NBC Radio began setting up at Santa Anita to broadcast the race nationally. The barometer continued to sink. Overhead, the clouds furrowed. The next morning, just as Seabiscuit stepped on the track for his final blowout, it began to rain. Then it cleared again, and Howard went to the track and crossed his fingers.

After the third race, David Alexander interrupted Howard in the Turf Club.

“It’s raining, Charley.”¹⁶

“No!” Howard shouted, a little too loud. “Three times in a row! This just can’t happen.”

He stared out at the rain. “It might stop,” he said weakly.

It rained harder and harder. A half hour before the race, Howard and Smith got into a station wagon and toured the track. The rain pinged off the roof. The horse needed the work badly, but the track was just too muddy to risk it. When the scratch appeared on the board, the crowd booed. The sun promptly came back out.

The scratchings were becoming a joke. “For hire: One Rain-Maker Racehorse,” wrote David Alexander.¹⁷ “Answers to the name of Seabiscuit. Guaranteed to cause rainstorms wherever he goes. Capable of solving all irrigation problems of dust bowl farmers. Can vastly simplify Federal reclamation projects in all drought areas. All businesses now operating under Federal Bankruptcy Law 7-B can become liquid at once by employing services of this miraculous animal.… Clockers have given up timing Seabiscuit with a stopwatch. They’re using a barometer instead.”

The rain kept falling. A week later Seabiscuit had to be scratched again.

Howard was driven to distraction and needed something to keep himself busy. Overhearing a valet lamenting the lack of funds to create an all-jockey baseball team, he jumped in.¹⁸

“Let me take care of it,” he said. “What will it cost?” The valets came up with an estimate of $23.80 per jockey.

“Go to it,” said Howard. “Go first-class.”

Arriving to watch them play, Howard was delighted to see that the jockeys had memorialized his generosity by ordering their uniforms in Howard red and white, with the Howard signature triangle on them. Instead of their own names, the jockeys had stenciled the names of Howard’s horses on the back. Howard attended every game, playfully rooting for the opposition.

Days slipped by. The Santa Anita Handicap was just weeks away. Seabiscuit had not raced once. His fans were so eager to see him that when Smith decided to treat the fans by sending the horse out for a public workout between races one afternoon, a massive crowd of forty thousand people flocked to Santa Anita to see it. The exercise was not doing the trick. “He’s gaining weight,” moaned Smith, “and we aren’t feeding him enough to satisfy a full-grown canary bird.” Seabiscuit was far behind in his preparation. The chances of his making the hundred-grander were dimming every day. Woolf couldn’t wait any longer. Pressured by trainers who wanted his services in the race, he gave up and signed on to ride Heelfly.

The sky finally cleared for Seabiscuit on February 9, and Smith sent him out for his first race, the La Jolla Handicap. Pollard begged Howard for the mount, and the owner relented. It was Pollard and Seabiscuit’s first race together since 1937. It was not a happy reunion. Seabiscuit broke in a tangle. Pollard tried to rush him into contention, only to be pocketed in. As Pollard waited for a gap to run through, a horse blew past. It was Heelfly, with Woolf in the stirrups. Pollard swung Seabiscuit out of the pack and asked him to chase Heelfly. There was no response. Seabiscuit finished third. Up in the press box, a San Francisco News reporter typed out the story. “We are afraid that on Handicap Day they’ll be passing the ’Biscuit, pappy, passing the ’Biscuit by.”¹⁹

Pollard slid slowly to the ground in front of the grandstand. He was crying.²⁰

Smith came out to meet him. He looked over Seabiscuit’s legs. The horse was perfectly sound. Smith wasn’t worried about the loss. “I’m satisfied. He was a short horse,” he said, using the horseman’s term for an animal who is not fully fit. “He ran like one.”

Pollard pulled himself together. Over the weekend, Yummy took him down to his old haunt, Caliente.²¹ The visit gave the rider confidence. “Can we do it? I say we can,” he told Alexander. “It’s me and the Biscuit, for the big money.” Pollard handed Yummy a stack of dollars and sent him to a future book operator to place a bet on the Santa Anita Handicap. “Seabiscuit,” he told him. “To win.”

A week later, Kayak and Seabiscuit paraded out for the San Carlos Handicap, the same race in which Pollard and Fair Knightess had fallen two years before. The 1940 running turned out better, but not by much. Given clear sailing, neither horse could even get into contention. At the half-mile pole, Seabiscuit abruptly propped.²² Pollard managed to hang on, but when he asked him to run, again the horse didn’t respond. Pollard crouched over his neck, urging him on and getting nothing, watching helplessly as horses flew past. A heartbreaking thought crossed his mind: He has nothing left.²³ The horse had never felt this way under him. As his old rival Specify flew to the victory, Seabiscuit labored in sixth, Kayak eighth. The crowd booed. “Seabiscuit seems definitely through as a top fighter,” wrote Jack McDonald. “Seabiscuit [is] apparently washed up.”

This time, Smith was rattled. He couldn’t understand what had happened. He wondered if his talents had failed him, if he had, in trying to compensate for months of undertraining, thrown too much work at his horse at once. He had two weeks to fix the problem and he wasn’t sure if he could.

Pollard left the track in despair. Around Santa Anita, people were blaming him for Seabiscuit’s losses, and he must have heard them. But as the days passed, something about the race kept pulling at him. At the half-mile pole, Seabiscuit had propped. He hadn’t done that since back in 1936, in the first race against Myrtlewood in Detroit. The horse hadn’t seemed tired before he did it, so it was strange that he tired abruptly afterward. Pollard began to wonder if the Biscuit had just been fooling around. Perhaps, he thought, he’d done it because he was feeling good and a little mischievous. Howard and the stable hands clung to the propping incident as a good omen.²⁴ It was all they had.

Smith was adamant that Pollard was the man for the job. Howard couldn’t commit to it. Shortly before Seabiscuit’s final prep race, the San Antonio, Pollard learned that Howard had sent a $500 retainer check to jockey Buddy Haas, asking him to come west.²⁵ Howard then made Seabiscuit’s entry for the Santa Anita Handicap.

He left the jockey space blank.

Later that week there was a rap at the door of David Alexander’s rental house in the Hollywood hills. It was Pollard. Alexander had never seen him in such a state. He was falling apart. He was, Alexander wrote, “nervous and worried and distraught.”

Alexander ushered Pollard into his den.²⁶ He tried to make small talk, telling the jockey that Bing Crosby’s hit “Pennies from Heaven” was written in that den by earlier tenants.

“That’s what I need,” Pollard muttered. “Pennies from heaven. And I’ve got just one more ride to get ’em.”

“How’s Pops?” Alexander asked.

“Pops’s leg is no worse than usual, but how’s the Cougar?” Pollard replied. Alexander watched as Pollard pulled his trouser leg up. The jockey’s leg was purple. A broad welt ran the entire length of it. It looked, Alexander wrote, “like a charred, knobby broomstick.”

“One little tap,” Pollard said. “Just one. But it’s got to last for one more ride.”

He shrugged. “Old Pops and I have got four good legs between us,” he said. “Maybe that’s enough.”

They talked about Pollard’s fears. The leg was only part of it. Buddy Haas’s impending arrival had him overwrought.

“I’ve got to ride that horse.” Pollard’s voice had a deadly urgency to it.

Alexander promised Pollard that he would talk to Howard. The following day he tracked the owner down and asked him point-blank if he was going to take the mount away from Pollard.

“What would you and the other newspaper boys do if I rode Haas?” Howard asked.

Alexander said he couldn’t speak for the whole press corps, but “I said I would crucify him and use a whole keg full of nails for the job.”

“If Red breaks that leg again,” Howard said soberly, “it will cripple him for life.”

Alexander told him that maybe it was better to break a man’s leg than his heart.

February 23 was the day before the San Antonio. Howard was pacing around Santa Anita, a rabbit’s foot working overtime in his pocket.²⁷ With only a week remaining before the Santa Anita Handicap, Seabiscuit had to run well or his attempted comeback would have to be deemed a failure. Kayak, too, had his reputation on the line. The whole barn was failing. Howard had never doubted his chances so much, and Smith had said nothing that reassured him.

A clerk met Howard on the bridge between the grandstand and clubhouse.

“Do you happen to have a rabbit’s foot, Mr. Howard?”

Howard said yes and pulled it out of his pocket.

“Give me that damn thing,” said the clerk. “It’s the unluckiest thing you can have on a racetrack.”

Howard handed it to him, and the clerk threw it away.

Beneath a hazy winter sky the following afternoon, Smith pushed Pollard up on Seabiscuit for the San Antonio, then went up to Howard’s box and sat down. Seabiscuit and Kayak walked out to the post. Smith said nothing, watching the horses. Howard worried. For what was surely the first time, he had not placed bets on his own horses. Marcela was so worried about jinxing the horses that she hadn’t come to the track.

Seabiscuit approached the starting gate. Smith studied his motion. He saw something there he hadn’t seen in a year. He leaned toward Howard and said five words: “It’s Seabiscuit, wire to wire.”²⁸

Howard wheeled on Smith in amazement. He jumped up, ran to the betting booth, and emptied his pockets into the clerk’s hands.

The crowd of thirty-five thousand hushed, and the bell rang. Seabiscuit broke alertly and bounded up with the early leaders. The field flew off into the backstretch. In his box, Howard was in agonies. The crowd murmured and waited.

A minute later the field bent around the far turn and rushed at the grandstand. There was one horse in front and pouring it on. His silks were red. It was Seabiscuit. The crowd roared. Pollard and Seabiscuit glided down the lane all by themselves, reaching the wire in track-record-equaling time. Kayak was right behind him. It was Pollard’s first win since 1938. Howard swept down the steps to shake his hand.

As Pollard and his horse moved past the grandstand, hundreds of men spontaneously rose together and doffed their hats to him, their eyes shining.²⁹ The cheering rolled over the track for more than fifteen minutes.

A few minutes later, Pollard sauntered out of the jocks’ room, smiling. “If the track is fast like it was today for next Saturday’s big race, we’ll win as far as a country boy can throw an apple,” he said.³⁰ “We made our comeback together. I guess me and the Biscuit both needed those first two races, but we are ready to meet all comers now.” He went to the barn to check on Seabiscuit. Smith was there, marveling at the horse. He was sounder than he had been in two years.³¹

Howard had seen enough. Buddy Haas would ride Kayak. Pollard had won the mount on Seabiscuit. “Just give us a fast track,” Pollard said.³² “That’s all we want.”

Howard went home to celebrate. It began to rain.

Trapped behind a wall of horses on the final turn of the 1940 Santa Anita Handicap, Pollard and Seabiscuit make a desperate attempt to run between Whichcee (rail) and Wedding Call.

(© BETTMANN/CORBIS)

Chapter 23

ONE HUNDRED GRAND

Every night Smith drifted off to the sound of raindrops ringing off the barn roof. Every morning he woke to the same sound. The National Weather Service switchboard took more phone calls in that week than ever in its history, with nearly every caller asking if the skies would clear for Seabiscuit’s run at the Handicap that Saturday.¹ The rain didn’t relent and Smith had no choice but to work the horse in the mud.

Early in the week, Smith brought Seabiscuit and Kayak out together. Howard stood by the barns and blinked at the clouds, a sarcastic smile on his face. He watched as the horses slogged through the mud, Seabiscuit dogging and taunting until Kayak pinned his ears and abruptly quit. They took the two horses back to the barn and cooled them out together. Kayak, clearly frustrated, took a lunge at Seabiscuit, dragging a groom with him. Smith was pleased. Seabiscuit was his old nasty self. Got to stop working these two together.

The rain kept falling. Smith kept working the horses. Kayak handled the mud well; Seabiscuit didn’t. “You know,” said Howard, “I wish one thing. It’s that Kayak’s four mud-running legs might be attached to Seabiscuit’s racing heart.² Then I’d have something.” The tapping of rain carried his words away.

Two days before the race, the heavens finally relented. The drying irons rolled out. Fifty track workers slogged over the course, sponging the mud out of the puddles. Slowly, the track dried.

Early on the morning of March 2, race day, groom Harry Bradshaw came down the shed row, poured a helping of oats into Seabiscuit’s bucket, then stepped out from under the shed row roof.³ At last the sun was breaking through. Bradshaw turned his face toward it. “Be with him today,” he said.⁴

Smith came up, working a strip of buckskin in his fingers.

“He’s right as rain, Mr. Smith,” said Bradshaw.

“Wrong word, Harry.”

The trainer stood back to let the horse eat. Seabiscuit heard his voice and nosed over his half door. Smith lay the flat of his hand on him.

“Today’s the day,” he said.

At eight o’clock Howard’s stable agent stepped into the track secretary’s office, scrawled the name Seabiscuit onto an entry slip, and dropped it into the entry box. He was the first horse entered. Then the agent dropped Kayak’s name in. Rain or shine, both horses would run.

The sun was still straining to clear the east end of the grandstand when the Howards pulled up to the barn. Pollard was already there. Howard looked anxiously at the jockey’s leg, the brace swelling the boot, and put his hand over Pollard’s shoulder. Pollard assured him that he’d be okay. Smith swung Pollard up on Seabiscuit to stretch his legs. Howard got up on his saddle horse, Chulo, Smith got on Pumpkin, and the sextet trotted out to the course for a prerace blowout.⁵ Marcela walked with them to the track apron and watched them go, her hands tight on the rail. The track was dry and fast. Smith signaled to Pollard, and Seabiscuit broke off and kicked over the track. Pollard talked in Seabiscuit’s ear as they whirled through a quarter mile in a scorching twenty-two seconds. Seabiscuit was ready to go. Pollard dismounted and went home to spend a few hours with Agnes.

People had begun gathering by the track gates just after dawn. By nine-thirty, the parking lot was already swollen with cars. Many people had driven across the nation to see the race; virtually every state in the union was represented by a license plate. They threw the gates open at ten. Five thousand fans gushed into the grandstand and clubhouse, staking out their territory with blankets and spring jackets. “It looked,” wrote Thoroughbred Record correspondent Barry Whitehead, “like the Oklahoma landrush.” The fans found Santa Anita decked out in all its splendor.⁶ In the clubhouse and turf club, arches of acacias, columns of jonquils, and giant gardenias with fifteen hundred blossoms stretched overhead, while peat beds of irises, white primroses, peach blossoms, and tulips lined the entire interior.

By ten-thirty, the grandstand was filled to capacity. By noon the parking lot couldn’t fit another car, and the overflow spilled out onto the track’s decorative lawns. A horse-loving priest from the church across the street opened his yard to let fans park there for free. Still the cars kept coming, snarling every local road for the entire day. Trains chugged up all afternoon; one of them, from San Francisco, had all seventeen cars filled to bursting with Seabiscuit fans. Up in the press box, reporters from all over the world arrived. Over the next few hours they would churn out half a million words on the Morse wires, Teletypes, and typewriters.⁷ The clubhouse roof and the top of the tote board were lined with newsreel cameras. In the luxury boxes, celebrities filed in: Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Jack Benny, Sonja Henie, James Stewart, and Mervyn LeRoy. Bing Crosby had stayed up all night recording at Universal so he could have the day off, and came with Mrs. Bing, rooting for yet another hopeless long shot from their barn, Don Mike.

By midafternoon, seventy-eight thousand people had crammed into the track, more than ten thousand in the infield alone. It was officially the second-largest crowd ever to attend a horse race in America, but because the record tally, at the Kentucky Derby, was famously exaggerated, the attendance at this hundred-grander was undoubtedly the largest.⁹ Radios all over the world were tuned to the broadcast from Santa Anita. The town of Willits was at a standstill. Up in Flint, Michigan, Howard had arranged to have the loudspeakers in the Buick salesroom rigged to broadcast the race.

The afternoon ticked on. The race approached.

At home, Pollard made his final preparations. Agnes strung a Saint Christopher medal onto a necklace and gave it to him.⁸ He slipped it on under his shirt. Before he left, he promised Agnes that he’d bring her flowers from the winner’s wreath.

The first big gust from the crowd came as Seabiscuit was led from the barn to the paddock. Marcela, who had stood with him in the barn, stayed behind. “I’d seen Johnny’s leg,” she said.¹⁰ “I just couldn’t watch it.”

When Pollard walked into the paddock, he was greeted by Doc Babcock, who had flown down from Willits. The doctor carefully unrolled Pollard’s leg bandages.

Yummy, who was there at the start, was there for the end. David Alexander was with him. Yummy, Alexander remembered, “sidled up to me like some character out of a spy novel.”¹¹

“I’ve got it,” Yummy whispered.

When Alexander asked what he had, Yummy flashed a little bottle of bow-wow wine, secreted away in his coat pocket. He told Alexander about his promise to Pollard: If he won, Yummy would sneak it to him.

Pollard strode over to his mount. Smith pulled the saddle over Seabiscuit’s withers and tightened the girth. Marcela’s Saint Christopher medal shone against the saddle cloth. Howard was beside himself with anxiety. When he was nervous he was talkative, and he had spent the afternoon calling Marcela at the barn over and over again and chattering at her. Now he prattled on at Pollard, giving him every needless detail of how to ride the race. Pollard humored him, then turned to Smith. The old cowpuncher lifted Pollard onto Seabiscuit’s back.

“You know the horse, and the horse knows you,” said Smith, winking.¹² “Bring him home.”

Howard tapped out a cigarette and tried to light it. His hands were trembling so much that his match went out. He lit a second match, then a third, and they too sputtered out. Alexander wished him luck.

“You’re shaking like a leaf,” he said, watching Howard work on the fourth match.

“I guess I’m a little nervous,” Howard replied, smiling.

Seabiscuit and Pollard stepped down the long lane toward the track. Howard was whispering, “I hope he can. I hope he can. I hope he can.” His jaw quivered.

As Seabiscuit stepped onto the track, swinging his head left, then right, the fans erupted in a massive ovation, drowning out the bugler playing “Boots and Saddles.” There was no question about the crowd’s allegiance. In the paddock the horsemen, virtually to a man, were hoping that if they didn’t get it, the old Biscuit would.¹³ “I’d like to see Seabiscuit win,” said a rival owner, “even though I’m running against him.” Up in the press box, Jolly Roger and all the other Wise We Boys had dropped their objectivity. Even Oscar Otis was up there, cheering Pollard on.

Alexander looked up at Pollard as he passed. The Cougar, Alexander later wrote, had “the old impish go-to-hell grin” on his face. Alexander thought of Huck Finn.¹⁴

Seabiscuit walked to the gate, the applause building and building. In the hush of the barn, Marcela suddenly changed her mind. She ran down the shed row, cut out into the daylight, and rushed toward the track. She knew she couldn’t get to the grandstand in time. She spotted a water wagon parked ahead, track workers perched up on top of it, and ran toward it.¹⁵ Her dress whipped in the wind.

The bell rang in Pollard’s ears, and he felt Seabiscuit drop and push beneath him, hammering the track and powering forward. There was the rushing sound of seventy-five thousand voices and the tumbling motion of horses and the flight of wind and dirt and the airy unreal feeling of mass and gravity slipping away.

They rolled down the homestretch for the first time, and Pollard felt the rightness of Seabiscuit’s stride, the smooth strumming under him. Whichcee had the lead. Pollard let Seabiscuit hunt him. They bent through the first turn, Pollard holding his mount one path out from the rail, an open lane ahead. A splendid spot.

Pollard could sense the pace as they straightened down the backstretch: blistering fast. But he knew Whichcee had stamina, and he couldn’t let him steal away. He had to drive Whichcee hard to break him. He held Seabiscuit a half length behind him, keeping just far enough out from the rail to give himself clear running room. Whichcee strained to stay ahead. The two horses blazed down the backstretch together, cutting six furlongs in 1:11⅕; though they were set to run a grueling mile and a quarter, the fastest sprinters on earth would have been drained to the bottom to beat such a time.^1,16 Whichcee screamed along the rail, stretching out over the backstretch, trying to hold his head in front. Seabiscuit stalked him with predatory lunges. Wedding Call tracked them, just behind and outside of Seabiscuit as they pushed for the far turn. They clipped through a mile in 1:36, nearly a second faster than Seabiscuit and War Admiral’s record-shattering split in their 1938 match race. Seabiscuit still pushed at Whichcee. Pollard, up in the saddle, was a lion poised for the kill.

They leaned around the final turn, and Seabiscuit pulled at Pollard’s hands, telling him he was ready. The rail spun away to the left, and Whichcee’s hindquarters rose and fell beside them. Wedding Call made his move, throwing his shadow over them from the right. Pollard stayed where he was, holding his lane one path out from the rail, leaving himself room to move around Whichcee when the time came.

The field was gathering, and the space around them compressed. Horses were all around, their bodies elongated in total effort. Then, in an instant, they came inward with the synchronicity of a flurry of birds pivoting in the air. Wedding Call clattered up against Seabiscuit, bumping him toward the rail behind Whichcee. The path ahead closed.

Seabiscuit felt the urgency and tugged at the reins. Pollard had nowhere to send him. He rose halfway up in the saddle, holding Seabiscuit back, his leg straining under his weight. Whichcee and Wedding Call formed a wall in front of him. A terrible thought came to Pollard: There is no way out.

A jockey in the pack heard a deep, plaintive sound rise up over the shouts from the crowd. It was Pollard, crying out a prayer.¹⁷ A moment later, Whichcee wavered and sagged a few inches to his left just as Wedding Call’s momentum carried him slightly to the right. A slender hole opened before Seabiscuit. Pollard measured it in his mind. Maybe it was wide enough; maybe it was not. If Pollard tried to take it, it was highly likely that he would clip his right leg on Wedding Call. He knew what that would mean. He needed an explosion from Seabiscuit, every amp of his old speed and more. He leaned forward in the saddle and shouted, “Now, Pop!”¹⁸

Carrying 130 pounds, 22 more than Wedding Call and 16 more than Whichcee, Seabiscuit delivered a tremendous surge. He slashed into the hole, disappeared between his two larger opponents, then burst into the lead. Pollard’s leg cleared Whichcee by no more than an inch. Whichcee tried to go with Seabiscuit. Pollard let his mount dog him, mocking him, and Whichcee broke. Seabiscuit shook free and hurtled into the homestretch alone as the field fell away behind him. Pollard dropped his head and rode for all he was worth. Joe Hernandez’s voice cut over the crowd, calling out Seabiscuit’s name, and was instantly swallowed in the uproar from the grandstand.¹⁹ One of the stable hands yelled to Marcela that Seabiscuit had the lead. She shrieked.

In the midst of all the whirling noise of that supreme moment, Pollard felt peaceful. Seabiscuit reached and pushed and Pollard folded and unfolded over his shoulders and they breathed together. A thought pressed into Pollard’s mind: We are alone.²⁰

Twelve straining Thoroughbreds; Howard and Smith in the grandstand; Agnes in the surging crowd; Woolf behind Pollard, on Heelfly; Marcela up on the water wagon with her eyes squeezed shut; the leaping, shouting reporters in the press box; Pollard’s family crowded around the radio in a neighbor’s house in Edmonton; tens of thousands of roaring spectators and millions of radio listeners painting this race in their imaginations: All this fell away.^21,22 The world narrowed to a man and his horse, running.

In the center of the track, a closer broke from the pack and rolled into Seabiscuit’s lead, a ghost from his past. It was Kayak, charging at him with a fury. Pollard never looked back. He knew who it was.

Pollard felt a pause. For the last time in his life, Seabiscuit eased up to tease an opponent. Kayak came to him and drew even. Up on Kayak, Buddy Haas had never heard such thunder as was pouring from the grandstand and infield.²³ He drilled everything he had, he said later, at Seabiscuit.

Pollard let Seabiscuit savor this last rival, then asked him again. He felt the sweet press of sudden acceleration. A moment later, Pollard and Seabiscuit were alone again, burning over the track, Kayak spinning off behind, the wire crossing overhead.²

The world broke over Santa Anita. Howard ran from his box with his fist in the air. Smith went with him. Yummy banged around the winner’s circle, jumping up and down. Agnes stood in the throng, sobbing. All around them, men and women hurled their hats in the air, poured onto the track, drummed on the rails, and slapped one another on the back. Hundreds of spectators were weeping with joy.²⁵ “Listen to this crowd roar!” shouted Hernandez.²⁶ “Seventy-eight thousand fans going absolutely crazy, including this announcer!” Virtually every journalist reported that he had never heard shouting so loud and sustained.

Sun Beau’s money-winning record had finally fallen. Seabiscuit had clocked a new track record that would stand untouched for a decade: a mile and a quarter in 2:01⅕. It was the second-fastest ten furlongs ever run in American racing history.³

Galloping out in the backstretch, Pollard lingered over his last few moments of solitude with Seabiscuit. Then he turned him and quietly cantered him back. He rode back into the world sitting tall and regal in the saddle, his back straight, his head up, his face gravely dignified. Tears were cutting down his face and streaming to his chin. He looked, someone said, like “a man who temporarily had visited Olympus and still was no longer for this world.”²⁷

He walked Seabiscuit through the masses of shouting fans to the winner’s circle. The horse was strutting like a prizefighter. “Don’t think,” Pollard said later, “he didn’t know he was the hero.” Howard rushed up to him, slapping his horse and shouting to Pollard. They led Kayak into the winner’s circle with Seabiscuit, the camera flashes playing off of them like lightning. The winner’s blanket of roses fell over Pollard’s lap. Beneath it, he felt Yummy’s hand in his, slipping the flask of bow-wow wine into his hand. Pollard dropped his head as if to smell the roses. “Best-smelling drink I ever tasted,” he would later say.²⁸ The horse stood calmly, serenely, plucking the roses off the blanket as souvenir hunters yanked hairs from his tail.

Pollard, his hair running with sweat, pulled the blanket over his shoulders and slid down from Seabiscuit’s back. Yummy, still pouncing up and down, jumped onto him. The blanket was torn from Pollard’s back, dragged away, and shredded by eager hands before he could pull out Agnes’s promised blooms. Howard never even saw it. Pollard uncinched his saddle and walked up the track to a chorus of wild cheering, tears still flowing over his cheeks. Fans were fighting to get close to him, to shake his hand. He slipped into the jockeys’ room and pulled off his silks. Agnes’s Saint Christopher medal glinted against his chest.

Woolf stood across the room. Whatever had separated him from Pollard had vanished. Both knew it. The redhead was whisked off to the press room. He bummed cigarettes off of the reporters as he praised Smith and Bradshaw and old Doc Babcock, then took a few shots at Woolf again, as he always used to.²⁹

There was no trace of bitterness in Woolf’s voice when he spoke of the race. He didn’t mind losing. “There was just too much Seabiscuit,” he said. “Just the greatest horse I ever saw.”

Long after the horses and their handlers had left the track, the din died away and the crowds trickled out. Workmen crisscrossed the grounds. A lone fan still stood at the east end of the grandstand. As the sun dropped in the winter sky, the man called out to the empty track.

“Ha-ray for Seabiscuit!³⁰ Hoo-ray for Seabiscuit!”

His voice carried up to the press box, where the reporters were banging out their stories. The room was still ringing with the sensation of what had happened.

“Oh,” wrote Jolly Roger, “that I lived to see this day.”³¹

———

Back at the barn, the Howards gathered to watch the horses cool out. Howard was wheeling all over the grounds, singing out, “What a race! What a horse! It was perfect!”

Smith barely looked up from Seabiscuit.

As dusk fell, Pollard walked up. Smith put his hand out to him.

“Red, you put up a great ride today.”³²

“I got a great ride,” Pollard said. “The greatest ride I ever got from the greatest horse that ever lived.”

“Little horse, what next?” a newspaper would read the next morning.³³ In six years, Seabiscuit had won thirty-three races and set thirteen track records at eight tracks over six distances. He had smashed a world record in the shortest of sprints, one half mile, yet had the stamina to run in track record time at one and five-eighths miles. Many of history’s greatest horses had faltered under 128 pounds or more; Seabiscuit had set two track records under 133 pounds and four more under 130 while conceding massive amounts of weight to his opponents. He was literally worth his weight in gold, having earned a world record $437,730, nearly sixty times his price.³⁴

Howard wavered on whether or not to race him again. Pollard urged retirement. When asked about it, Smith said, “Seabiscuit is Mr. Howard’s horse.³⁵ I will abide by whatever decision Mr. Howard makes.”

Later, someone heard him whisper under his breath, “I hope he doesn’t race anymore.”

Howard heeded his trainer’s wishes. The partnership was over.

Charles and Marcela whirled off to the Turf Club Ball at the Ambassador Hotel Fiesta Room, where they laughed and celebrated and slurped champagne from a gigantic golden loving cup. Howard’s eyes scanned the faces of the revelers, searching for Smith. He was hoping that this one time the trainer would show up. He had a 1940 Buick Estate wagon that he wanted to give him. But Smith never came. Sometime in the evening, Howard snuck away to a telephone.³⁶

The phone rang in Smith’s room. Howard’s voice bubbled over the line, begging him to join the festivities. Smith declined; he was already in bed. Howard accepted it. He wished the trainer good night, put down the telephone, and returned to his element.

Red, Agnes, David Alexander, and Yummy spent the evening in The Derby, a tavern Woolf had bought in preparation for his retirement.³⁷ The place was vintage Woolf, decorated floor to ceiling in flamboyant cowboy memorabilia.

They gathered around a table and talked. Outside, the Depression was playing itself out, and with it would go the world that had been shaped by it. War was coming, and America was turning its long-averted face upward. It would soon be dawn.

Red Pollard sipped his scotch and reminisced about Seabiscuit and quietly slipped out of history. The smoke from his cigarette curled up from his fingers and slowly faded away.

Smith slept briefly, then woke. Before the sun fingered over the tips of the San Gabriels, his stiff, gray form passed down the shed row at Barn 38. The air carried the hushed sound of stirring straw, and the horses shook the sleep from their bodies. In the darkness, they didn’t see Smith coming, but they knew he was there.

Charles Howard and Seabiscuit

(COL. MICHAEL C. HOWARD)

1 This is no exaggeration. The six-furlong split time for the race was as fast as, or faster than, the winning time of seven of the ten previous runnings of the nation’s most prestigious six-furlong stakes race, the Toboggan. Though the Santa Anita racing surface was probably somewhat faster than the Belmont surface, the Toboggan was run over a straight course, not around turns, as the Santa Anita Handicap was; as horses almost always slow down to negotiate turns, times in straight-course races tended to be considerably faster than those held around turns. Indeed, the Santa Anita split time was actually faster than the 1940 winning times of many of the nation’s most prominent sprint races, including the Fall Highweight Handicap, the Jamaica, Hialeah Inaugural, the Interborough, the Roseben, the Paumonok, and the Capital.

2 In the race’s aftermath, some observers argued that Kayak was robbed of victory. The reasoning was as follows. Before the race, Howard had Seabiscuit “declared to win,” meaning that if Kayak and Seabiscuit were running one-two, Kayak could be held back so Seabiscuit could win. This was legal because they were coupled as a single betting interest. In the race, Buddy Haas, aboard Kayak, didn’t whip his horse in the final yards, and Seabiscuit won by a length. Some spectators believed that if ridden harder, Kayak might have passed Seabiscuit. Later, Haas stated that he could have won. Thus the speculation began.

Under closer scrutiny, Kayak’s case falls apart. Though Haas did state that he could have won, he also repeatedly stated that he couldn’t have won. “I let Kayak run all the way,” he said, “and he simply couldn’t have caught Seabiscuit.” What did he really believe? Howard said he asked Haas privately to tell him the truth, assuring him that he loved both horses and would be happy either way. Haas replied that Kayak couldn’t have beaten Seabiscuit.²⁴

Even if Kayak had more to give, it doesn’t automatically follow that he could have outkicked Seabiscuit. The Biscuit was a ferocious competitor famous for slowing down to let challengers catch him, then annihilating them with dazzling bursts of speed, even after setting world record fractions. “It may have seemed that [Kayak could have won], but you have to ride Seabiscuit to know him,” said Pollard. “No horse is ever going to pass him once he gets to the top and the wire is in sight.… A horse racing alongside him just makes him run all the harder.”

Many others, including most of the jockeys and prominent reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle, Daily Racing Form, Thoroughbred Record, Los Angeles Examiner, and other major publications, agreed. David Alexander, who knew both horses better than any other journalist, wrote, “Had [Kayak] ever got to Seabiscuit’s saddle girth, Seabiscuit would have come on again and won anyway.” When asked if Kayak could have won, George Woolf, who had ridden both horses, laughed and said, “If Kayak had charged at him … [Seabiscuit] would have bounded away.… That fellow never saw the day when he could take the champ.” Asked the same question, Tom Smith said, “Kayak never saw the day when he could beat Seabiscuit, at ten yards or ten miles.”

Kayak was a grand athlete, but the idea that he was robbed of the race isn’t very plausible. To speculate about Kayak is to miss what is by far the most important fact about the race: By any measure, Seabiscuit delivered an astounding performance, running a vastly better race than Kayak or any other horse. The early pace was extraordinarily fast, and Seabiscuit helped to set it. Any race run with such a fast pace is tailor-made for closers, exhausting the front-runners and leaving the way open for late-runners to charge up from behind to win. While Seabiscuit burned his energy in a fierce speed duel, Kayak lay last, preparing to pounce when the front-runners grew weary. As the speed collapsed and closers like Kayak got going, Seabiscuit, remarkably, sustained his speed, clocking the second-fastest ten furlongs in American racing history. He did it at age seven, carrying highweight of 130 pounds, returning from serious injury. Nothing Kayak did that day, or any other, compared to that.

3 Officially, there were two ten-furlong times that were faster than Seabiscuit’s, but the American record of 2:00, set by Whisk Broom II at Belmont in 1913, is almost universally regarded as inaccurate, the result of a timer that malfunctioned and recorded a far faster time than the horse ran. The true American record was held by Sarazen, who ran ten furlongs in 2:00⅘ at Kentucky’s Latonia Racecourse in 1924.

EPILOGUE

On a soft April day in 1940, Smith led Seabiscuit out of the Kaiser Suite for the last time. There had been countless requests for appearances—the promoters of the Golden State International Exhibition, having secured the attendance of F.D.R., wanted to host “that other great American, Seabiscuit”—but Howard declined them all. It was time to let the horse rest. Howard had preceded Seabiscuit up to Ridgewood and had coaxed every reporter, newsreel man, admirer, and friend in his address book into driving up to attend the horse’s homecoming. He proudly introduced everyone to Seabiscuit’s first foal, still wobbling on new legs. The owner passed out cigars and showed off the sacks of fan mail addressed to “Daddy Seabiscuit” and “Pappa Seabiscuit.” The foal delighted Pollard in particular; he was a redhead. Howard named him First Biscuit.

Smith wasn’t going to join the celebration. He preferred to say his good-byes at the track. He slipped his fingers into Seabiscuit’s halter and led him down the shed row. A somber group of newsmen, spectators, and horsemen quietly parted to let them pass. Seabiscuit paused and looked toward the track, and Smith’s eyes clouded over. He led his horse up the ramp and disappeared into the darkness. A moment later, he emerged alone.¹

———

The men who handled Seabiscuit quietly scattered. Woolf continued his dizzying ascent, becoming the leading rider in America. On the day in 1942 when he rode Triple Crown winner Whirlaway to break Seabiscuit’s earnings record, Pollard was up in the stands cheering him on with his usual lack of restraint, bouncing around the box, rooting himself hoarse, and drawing the stares of everyone nearby. Dismounting, Woolf was swamped by reporters asking him to confirm that “Whirly” was the best horse he had ever ridden. Woolf was as impolitic as ever. “Seabiscuit,” he said, “is the greatest horse I ever rode.”²

On a January day in 1946, Woolf rode into the Santa Anita starting gate for a weekday race. At thirty-five, he was preparing to end one of history’s greatest athletic careers. He was struggling with his diabetes, and friends had noticed that he was unusually thin that winter.³ That afternoon, Woolf wasn’t feeling well enough to ride, but a friend needed a jockey for a horse named Please Me. Woolf didn’t need to think about it. “There was one thing special you can say about George,”⁴ Smith would say of him. “He remembered the little fellows who were his friends when he needed them. He never forgot about his friends. Say that about George.” Please Me was an ordinary horse in an ordinary race, so Woolf used weekday tack. When he walked out to the paddock, he left his lucky kangaroo-leather saddle in his trunk.⁵

For George Woolf, the last sensations of life were the sight of Santa Anita’s russet soil and the curve of Please Me’s neck, the coarse feel of mane in his hands, the smell of the horse’s skin, the deep roll of his breathing. As Woolf and his mount passed the grandstand and banked into the first turn, some witnesses thought they saw Please Me stumble. But most saw Woolf sink from the saddle, unconscious, his dieting and diabetes finally taking their toll. He slid into the air.⁶ There was the awful dissonance of a lone horse galloping riderless. There was terrible speed and terrible, sudden stillness.

The sound of the Iceman’s head striking the track carried over the crowd.⁷ Woolf’s friends turned away.⁸

Fifteen hundred people came to say good-bye to Woolf.⁹ Genevieve, widowed at thirty-two, sat in a front pew. Gene Autry sang “Empty Saddles in the Old Corral,” his voice wafting out over rows and rows of faces, spilling back to the church’s opened doors, down the steps, and filling the street. Pollard was among them, sobbing for his best friend. “I wonder who has Woolf’s book?”¹⁰ he said later. “Saint Peter, or some other bird?”

Three years later a wistful bugle cry carried over the empty track at Santa Anita, and sixteen thousand people gathered by the paddock to witness the unveiling of the George Woolf memorial statue. Much of the price had been footed by Please Me’s owner, Tiny Naylor, who sold a horse at auction and donated the proceeds to the statue fund. The rest had come from the California Turf Writers Committee and countless contributions from trackers and fans the world over. Genevieve joined Charles Howard in the center of the paddock to hear a eulogy delivered by Joe Hernandez, the man who first called Woolf “Iceman.” The jockeys lined up in silent attention before Woolf’s veiled likeness, their hats over their hearts. The cloth was slid from the statue.

Woolf’s handsome face looked out across Santa Anita once again. He stood just as he always had in life, hand on hip, chin up, radiating insouciance, the kangaroo-leather saddle over his arm. His gaze fell to the east end of the paddock and rested on the life-sized bronze image of Seabiscuit that Howard had placed there.

“George Woolf is at Santa Anita, there near the paddock, facing [sculptor Tex] Wheeler’s magnificent figure of Seabiscuit,” wrote the Thoroughbred Times’s Jack Shettlesworth.¹¹ “He’ll be there as long as Santa Anita stands. Santa Anita will be there as long as people feel anything about anything in racing.”

Howard lobbied to get Smith named champion trainer of 1940, but Smith would never have the respect he deserved. Owner and trainer continued to work together until the spring of 1943, when Smith underwent back surgery and wound up in a yearlong convalescence that forced Howard to replace him. They parted amicably, and Smith went, of all places, to the East, signing on as trainer for cosmetic queen Elizabeth Arden Graham.¹²

Graham was a woman of famously dubious sense, and working for her was a tall order. She demanded that her trainers apply her beauty products to her horses. Prone to premonitions, she once dreamt that her filly had climbed a tree and called her trainer in the middle of the night to see if the dream had come true. “I climbed all the way up in that tree,” replied the much abused trainer, “and if [the filly] was up there, she got back in that stall all right.” She was also famous for firing workers for absurd reasons; she once dismissed an exercise boy because his hair was “remarkably bushy and profuse.” She went through trainers like chewing gum. But once she found Smith, she was sold. She loved the way he nurtured her horses. “There’s something about Tom Smith,” she said, “that gives you confidence.” He humored her insistence that stalls be perfumed and horses be slathered in cold creams, trained just as he wanted, and won everything in sight. “I try not to hurt her feelings,” he once said, “and yet do it my way.” He soon became the leading trainer in America.

Smith was sitting in Graham’s box one afternoon when an ancient man hobbled up to him. It was Samuel Riddle, easing down in his last years of life. For years, Riddle had burned with resentment over War Admiral’s loss to Seabiscuit, turning his head away when he saw Smith, never speaking a word. But this day Riddle halted in front of Smith and directed his first words to him since the race.¹³ “Tom,” he said, “you and that George Woolf are the only ones who ever outdid me.”

On November 1, 1945, one of Smith’s horses, a claimer named Magnific Duel, was being prepared for a New York race when a Jockey Club official saw a groom spraying something up the horse’s nostril.¹⁴ The atomizer he took from the stall contained 2.6 percent ephedrine, a decongestant. Smith was in deep trouble. New York did not allow any medications in racing horses. Though Smith was not present when the incident occurred and there was no evidence that he knew what his groom was doing, by racing law he was responsible for anything his employee did. The Jockey Club suspended him immediately, pending a hearing. Smith was aghast. “I am absolutely innocent,” he said.

At the hearing, pharmacologists testified that the dosage in the atomizer was far too low to have any effect on the horse’s performance. The horse had tested negative for any trace of the drug. In a quarter century of training, Smith hadn’t received a single black mark on his record. It made no sense that, while training the leading barn in America, winner of half a million dollars in purses in 1945, he would have had any interest in tampering with a $1,900 claimer. From a betting standpoint, he had even less to gain; the horse was a heavy favorite, and would have paid only a few cents on the dollar. His defense convinced nearly everyone in racing and the public that he was not deserving of punishment, but it was not enough for the Racing Commission.¹⁵ In an extremely controversial decision, Smith was banned from racing for one year.

In his seventy years, Smith had never known a life apart from horses. He had nowhere to go. He came to Santa Anita, but officials wouldn’t let him in. He spent his days sitting alone out on Baldwin Avenue, just outside the track fence, watching his sport go on without him. Graham may have been the strangest of eccentrics, but she was loyal. She paid for a prominent lawyer for Smith, hired his son Jimmy to train in his place, and gave him back his job the minute he was reinstated in 1947.¹⁶ He repaid her by promptly winning the Kentucky Derby with her horse Jet Pilot.

But the damage had been done. Unquestionably one of the greatest trainers who ever lived, Smith was excluded from racing’s Hall of Fame for more than forty years after his death. His reputation was ruined; racing officials tailed him around after his reinstatement, trying to catch him in some nefarious act. Smith was bitter for the rest of his life. He toyed with the officials, pretending to hide things in the hay and sending his pursuers on wild-goose chases, hoping to be accused again so he could be exonerated and make fools of the officials. When Time asked him to speak about the Racing Commission, Smith was typically pithy. “Those bastards.”¹⁷

He descended into obscurity just as he had risen from it. He eventually parted with Graham and wound up training a single horse at Santa Anita.¹⁸ When he was seventy-eight, a stroke stilled him. His family nursed him at home until his worsening condition made home care impossible. He was sent to live his last days in the antiseptic confinement of a sanatorium, where his family sat with him through his final hours. At Forest Lawn in Glendale, California, on a cold day in 1957, they buried the man the Indians called the Lone Plainsman. Almost no one came.¹⁹

Pollard had exhausted every physical and emotional reserve to get himself back to the Santa Anita Handicap, and he emerged near collapse. Agnes was afraid for him. They finally had some money, so the two left town immediately for a long vacation. There Pollard coped with what he called his “nervous reaction” to the strain, and the two of them discussed their future. When Pollard came back, he had an announcement to make. “My pal’s quit racing,” he said. “I’m not getting any younger, and I’ve had more than my share of serious accidents. Maybe I won’t be lucky in escaping with nothing worse than broken bones next time.”

“I’ll never throw a leg over another horse,” he said, “unless it’s for a canter in the park.”²⁰

Howard offered him a job as his stable agent. Impressed with the work Pollard had done to get Seabiscuit back to the track, Howard hoped to have the redhead succeed Smith when the old trainer finally took down his shingle. Pollard took the job.

One day in early May 1940, Pollard limped down the shed rows at Santa Anita in his best impersonation of a run. Agnes was in labor, and he was desperate to find someone with a car. He found a teenaged kid who could drive, dragged him out to his car and pressed him into service. Pollard reached the hospital a few minutes later and promptly fainted from the excitement. He was hospitalized alongside his wife, who delivered a little girl that Pollard named after his sister Norah. Pollard would have known her anywhere; her voice, even as a baby, was a deep baritone like his. In a few years, a son, John, would follow.

Eventually Pollard took out a trainer’s license and tried to do for a barnful of horses what he had done for Seabiscuit in 1939. It didn’t work out. Describing himself as “a barnacle on the wheels of progress,” he quit.²¹ With nothing better to do, he took out a jockey’s license, strapped his fur-lined leg brace back on, and returned to riding. This time he had a safety net. Evidently with Howard’s blessing, he had joined the newly established Jockeys’ Guild, the final realization of Tommy Luther’s community-fund insurance idea. He was voted onto its first board of directors.

The war came down on Santa Anita a few months later. The horses were shipped out and men and women and children were shipped in, Japanese-Americans interned in stalls meant for animals. The Kaiser Suite became home to an entire family, the Satos.²³ When the Satos and their unfortunate brethren were moved out in 1943, the track became Camp Santa Anita, a massive ordnance storage site and open-air Army barracks for thousands of soldiers.

Seized by patriotic fervor, Pollard galloped off to join the military.²⁴ Due to his innumerable injuries, he was deemed such a spectacularly unfit soldiering prospect that all three services rejected him. He went back, once again, to race riding.

Agnes had had enough of lugging her babies through hotels and rental places. They journeyed east and bought a little house in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. He rode with less and less success, winding up back in the bush leagues. He spent part of each year on the road, traveling alone from motel to motel, and the rest booting horses around Rhode Island’s declining Narragansett Park, soon to meet the bulldozer, where he and Pops once raced.

He continued to endure horrific injuries, falling so often that he quipped about having a “semiannual comeback.” He never received anything but the worst care. He went down one day at Narragansett and was taken to the hospital, but no one ever came to look him over, so he just got up and went home. It wasn’t until much later that he learned that he had walked out on a broken hip. After breaking his back in a spill in Maryland in 1942, he was carried to a hospital in a laundry basket.²⁵ The injury knocked him out of the sport for a year and left him with one leg shorter than the other. A 1945 head injury incurred in a Florida race cost him a handful of teeth and nearly his life. “When I woke up, the parish priest leaned over me and whispered, ‘The Devil has no stall for you,’ so here I am,” he told reporters after awakening. “And I guess I’ll be here forever, me and Methuselah.”²⁶

He nearly was. His brilliant red hair slowly went gray, his blind eye paled, his battered body aged, and still he rode racehorses. He rode alongside kids who hadn’t even been born when he first offered a sugar cube to Seabiscuit, but he never let the latest teenaged hotshot get the best of him. Shouting, “No room at the bar!” he would cut off the rail route and make some poor kid go around the long way.

He came home at night and Agnes tended to him. So many phone calls told her of terrible crashes that she came to fear the phone’s ring. On some mornings the back door banged open to reveal a host of muddy racetrackers, carrying a bloodied Red in from another fall. She prayed for his safety every day, but never complained to him. She understood, as would her children, that her husband would have suffocated in any other life. He was in constant and serious pain, but didn’t speak of it. He still carried a rosary and little volumes of poetry in his pocket, and still gave away most of the money he earned. His children grew up knowing to be careful around their father’s game leg, which never fattened up to anything much thicker than a broomstick. Pollard wove his books into his children’s lives but did not try to teach them about horses. He never once brought them to the track to see him ride and didn’t tell the stories of his youth. The closest his daughter, Norah, ever came to the races was to comply with his request to paint a cougar on his helmet.

By 1955, when he was forty-six, he couldn’t make it any longer. “Maybe I should have heeded the rumble of that distant drum when I was riding high,” he once said.²⁷ “But I never did. Trouble is, you never hear it if you are a racetracker. Horses make too damned much noise.” He called David Alexander from across the country to tell him the news. “I’m hanging up my blouse for good,”²⁸ he said. “I wanted you to be the first to know. You can’t first-past Father Time.”

“It’s about time,” said Alexander. When the writer paid tribute to him in a lengthy article in Time, Pollard called him up and sang every verse of “You Made Me What I Am Today, and I Hope You’re Satisfied,” then hung up.²⁹

Pollard wound up sorting mail in a track post office, then working as a valet, cleaning the boots of other riders.³⁰ His racetrack injuries worsened as he aged, and he slowly became a prisoner in his own body. He struggled as hard as he could against his alcoholism but never beat it.³¹

One day in the waning years of his life, Red Pollard stopped talking. Perhaps it was a physical problem. Perhaps the old raconteur just didn’t want to speak anymore. When on rare occasions a reporter turned up to ask about Seabiscuit, Agnes answered the questions while Red sat by, mute.³²

In 1980 Agnes was hospitalized with cancer. Though only seventy, Pollard was suffering from so many physical problems that he could no longer get along without her. His children had no choice but to place him in a nursing home. He knew this ground. The home had been built over the ruins of Narragansett Park.³³

The Cougar slipped away one day in 1981, uttering not a word in parting. Agnes was with him when he stopped breathing. His heart kept beating for several minutes, then went still. No cause of death was ever found.³⁴ It was as if, Norah remembers, “he had just worn out his body.”³⁵ Agnes died two weeks later.

Seabiscuit and Howard grew old together in the slow rhythms of Ridgewood. Howard’s hair thinned; Seabiscuit’s muddy bay coat darkened. Howard kept the horse with Kayak in a handsome red barn and installed a walking ring that led right up to the door of Howard’s house. He hung a sign on the pillared gates to the ranch, out on the Redwood Highway, that read: RIDGEWOOD, HOME OF SEABISCUIT. VISITORS WELCOME.³⁶

The visitors came, fifty thousand over the years, as many as fifteen hundred at a time.^37,38 Howard erected a little grandstand by his horse’s paddock and ushered the spectators in to watch him. Kayak thrilled the crowds by galloping around his adjacent paddock in all his black splendor. Most of the time, all Seabiscuit did was stretch out on his side, drowsing in the shade of his paddock oak tree.³⁹ Occasionally, he would raise his head and look the spectators over, then drop off to sleep again.⁴⁰ Once in a while he’d get up and amble over to his admirers, licking their cameras and sticking his tongue out to be scratched.

With each spring the foals came. Howard doted on them as if they were his own children. “They are the finest foals I have ever seen,” he said when the first crop came, “and I am not prejudiced when I say this.” They all had their father’s amiable personality, and most of them had his homely little body too. Nearly all were homebreds, the products of Howard’s moderately bred mares; the ranch was more than six hundred miles from the nearest major breeding farm, and few breeders wanted to subject their mares to such a long haul. So Howard used his own mares, pampered and overfed their babies, and sent them into training fat and happy.

When the “Little Biscuits” reached racing age and went south to the tracks, the public flocked in to see them. Thousands of admirers came out to watch their workouts, and on race days full houses packed in to cheer for them and for proud old Howard. The owner issued Christmas card photos of Seabiscuit standing with his foals. The cards became hot items across the nation. One racetrack, Chicago’s Arlington Park, recreated one in a giant mural.

A few of the Seabiscuits could run. Sea Sovereign and Sea Swallow became stakes winners, as did a chip off the old block, a grandson named Sea Orbit, who ran sixty-seven times, winning twenty-two, including a long list of elite stakes races in California. One of Fair Knightess’s foals, Phantom Sea, became stakes-placed. But most of the Seabiscuits were poor racehorses, and because Howard refused to let them suffer the indignity of running at their ability level, in claiming races, few of them won anything on the track. Howard didn’t seem to notice. After an advisor talked him into selling an especially slow one, Howard quietly bought him back. “You don’t understand,” he explained. “This one used to eat sugar cubes out of my hand.”

Hollywood took the tale of Seabiscuit’s life, deleted everything interesting, and made an inexcusably bad movie, The Story of Seabiscuit, starring Shirley Temple. They cast one of Seabiscuit’s sons in the title role. When they set up to film the War Admiral match race, they deliberately chose a woefully sluggish horse to play War Admiral. Unfortunately, the Seabiscuit son was even slower. Every time they tried to shoot the race, the colt playing War Admiral beat the colt playing Seabiscuit, no matter how hard the jockeys tried to prevent it. Eventually, they gave up and substituted film of the actual race.

Seabiscuit settled well into his retirement. Knowing he needed activity, Howard taught him how to herd cattle.⁴¹ The horse loved it, nipping at the animals’ rumps and torturing them as he had once tortured War Admiral and Kayak. Every day the ranch hands rode him out with Pumpkin on a five-mile jaunt, trotting up and down the California hills, cantering alongside the lake, pausing to graze on the mountain grass. He became very fat—1,250 pounds—and blissfully happy. Every fall he would pose for family portraits, sometimes with Marcela aboard, and Howard would have the photos printed in huge numbers and mailed to everyone he knew.

When the war came, Howard looked into building a bomb shelter for the horse but eventually gave up the idea.⁴² He worked to help the war effort, donating an ambulance to the British Red Cross, which named it Seabiscuit.⁴³ Howard printed patriotic messages on all the Seabiscuit Christmas cards and mailed Seabiscuit’s shoes off to bomber pilots as good-luck charms. Two bombers were named for the horse. The navy’s Seabiscuit bomber was painted with the horse’s smoke-breathing likeness.⁴⁴ The air force’s Seabiscuit, which was shot down off the coast of China in 1944, had the horse’s name painted across its nose.⁴⁵

As Seabiscuit aged, Howard faded. His heart began to fail him, and his life slowly contracted. Marcela, who adored him to the last, nursed him through his final years. He showered her in flowers and little love notes, written in a wavering hand. He found one last success on the track, this time with the great Noor, winner of the Santa Anita Handicap and conqueror of Triple Crown winner Citation. “Guess you’ve got another Seabiscuit on your hands,” said a reporter after Noor’s greatest win. Howard, thin and unsteady, straightened up and raised his chin. “Sir,” he said, “there will never be another Seabiscuit.”⁴⁶

When his heart became too frail for him to endure the thrill of seeing his horses run, Howard came to the track anyway, sitting in the parking lot and listening to race calls on the radio in his Buick.⁴⁷ In what is believed to be the last photograph ever taken of him, he was at the racetrack, standing in the winner’s circle. After leaving the track, he would go back to Ridgewood to be near the horses. On beautiful days, he would throw a saddle over Seabiscuit, and together they would walk into the hills to lose themselves in the redwoods.⁴⁸

———

On the morning of May 17, 1947, Marcela met her husband at breakfast and told him his rough little horse was gone, dead of an apparent heart attack at the relatively youthful age of fourteen.⁴⁹ The onetime bicycle repairman, whose own heart would fail him just three years later, was beside himself with grief. “I never dreamed,” he said, “the old boy would go so quickly.”⁵⁰ Someone broke the news to Pollard, who was plugging away on claimers at Suffolk Downs. His mind rolled back over all those years. “It seems only yesterday,” he said.

Howard had the body carried to a secret site on the ranch. After Seabiscuit was buried, the old owner planted an oak sapling over him. Howard, a vigorously public man, made his last gesture to his horse a private one. He told only his sons the location of the grave and let the oak stand as the only marker.⁵¹ Somewhere in the high country that once was Ridgewood, the tree lives on, watching over the bones of Howard’s beloved Seabiscuit.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“NUDE PHOTOS AID SCIENCE”

If you found yourself in a red-light district in the spring of 1951 and you had a spare quarter, you could purchase SIR! A Magazine for Males and read the story behind this cover headline. The magazine was the strangest of hybrids, a girlie gazette straining to pass itself off as a scientific journal. As pornography, it was a crashing failure. The featured model in an article on “Latin Quarter Lovelies” is shown hopping around in nothing but four one-quart-capacity Egyptian fezes—only one of which is on her head—with pasties stuck to the bottoms. The cover story asserts that corpulent people tend to be jolly and helpfully offers shots of nude models as proof. In another piece, “PURE SCIENCE UNCOVERS ANCIENT VICE,” the life’s labors of a University of Chicago classics professor are distilled into a discussion of how “The Antics of the Ancient Greeks Would Make Modern Playboys Drool with Envy.” Somehow the magazine endured, thanks to advertising from “rupture control” companies and a pharmaceutical outlet that sold thirty days’ worth of “genuine Male Sex Hormones” in a plain brown wrapper for $5.

SIR! came to grace my bookshelf after I typed the name George Woolf into an Internet auction search engine and turned up the magazine as a match. I didn’t have much hope for it, but the mystery of how an unpornographic, unscientific jockey landed in a pseudo-scientific porn magazine got the best of me. I shelled out $2.50 and gave SIR! a home. When it arrived, I flipped through and discovered, sandwiched between the trusses and jolly jiggling women, a wealth of tales of the Iceman’s exploits: setting his tack on fire, sleeping on the jocks’ room roof, riding pantsless down a homestretch before a grandstand full of fans. I called Woolf’s old friends and asked them about the stories. They verified all of them and even provided details the magazine had missed. SIR! had merit after all.

Writing this book has been a four-year lesson in how history hides in curious places. I obtained the narrative’s basic framework from the usual suspects—newspapers in the Library of Congress and other archives, official track chart books, racing histories, magazines. But the narrative they offered, though intriguing, was incomplete. The textures of my subjects’ personalities, their complex relationships, motives, fears, thoughts, and secrets, all remained elusive, as did the small but telling details that give historic figures immediacy and resonance in the imagination. My subjects had long since died, but I was convinced that they must have left behind some detritus. I began prowling Internet search engines, memorabilia auctions, and obscure bookstores, writing letters and placing “information wanted” ads, and making hundreds of calls to strangers in hopes that someone or something could illuminate what seemed to be a lost past.

The story wasn’t lost. It was scattered all over North America, tucked in back pockets and bottom drawers. A remarkable quantity of information came from an odd assortment of memorabilia, most purchased, some borrowed from a proselytizing sect of collectors. A few items were bad investments—a disco tribute to Seabiscuit springs to mind—but most yielded something of value, sometimes a note that gave an added dimension to a man, sometimes a forgotten anecdote or a critical explanation. In faded magazines and moldy newspapers I discovered rare photos, long interviews with my subjects, conversations between them, and exhilarating eyewitness accounts of events in their lives. My subjects’ private lives and the world they inhabited unfolded in the pages of almost a dozen forgotten autobiographies of horsemen stretching back to 1913 Kentucky Derby–winning rider Roscoe Goose. On a crackling audiotape I heard George call out to Red from the back of Seabiscuit, standing in the midst of a roaring throng. A 1945 Jockey’s Guild yearbook found in a Virginia bookshop yielded details on Frenchy Hawley and the stomach-turning mechanics of reducing. I unearthed Seabiscuit’s signature board games, pinball machine, wastebasket, postcards, and “endorsement” ads for two beer brands, two lines of Seabiscuit oranges, whiskey, a hotel, a humor magazine, a dry-cleaning service, and ladies’ hats. I was the only bidder in an auction for what turned out to be a rare film of the Seabiscuit–War Admiral match race, one of a half-dozen race films and newsreels I was able to obtain.

My greatest source was living memory. An ad placed in the Daily Racing Form on Breeders’ Cup day yielded a stack of letters. At least ten were written on the backs and in the margins of tip sheets and racing programs. One was composed in crayon on a slip of paper torn into a rough hexagon. Nearly all were penned in the sweeping Victorian script of a lost age. I picked up the phone and started calling these people and the hundred or so potential sources I found through racing contacts. Once or twice, my call wasn’t well received. “How old do you think I am?” snapped an angry octogenarian when asked if he had known any of the Seabiscuit crew (he died of old age a few months later). Some were a little too eager to talk. “You sound like a young girl!” a gravely ninety-something man thundered into the phone. “I like young girls!” Some told me more than I ever imagined, like the aged horseman who described his bodice-ripping romps with the Molino Rojo girls, then asked me not to print his name “’cause my ex-wives might not like it.” Most of the time, my interviewees welcomed me into what one source called “those dear, dead days” and allowed me to linger as long as I wished.

The luxury of researching those who achieve the extraordinary is that their lives play out before many observers. I spoke with people who saw Red Pollard hitch his toboggan to his pony, tumble down under Fair Knightess, spout Shakespeare and throw fists in the jocks’ room, draw his last breaths in a nursing home built on the ruins of a track on which he once rode. I followed Woolf through the memories of friends, from a grade school classmate to a man who saw him die and sat vigil over his body on the day of his funeral. I found a groom who handled Seabiscuit for Fitzsimmons, the boys who galloped him for Smith, and several dozen witnesses to his races. I was even contacted by a nearly hundred-year-old former groom living in a telephoneless trailer in the desert, who is evidently the last person on earth who recalls the Lone Plainsman telling of his youth on the mustang ranges. The Detroit cemetery worker; the wife speaking for a husband muted by a stroke; the ancient trainer living through his last summer tethered to an oxygen tank; the clerk at a mail-order seafood company; the operator of the Seabiscuit liquor store in Hercules, California: each had something to contribute. Again and again, when I was able to check their testimony against records kept at the time, the accuracy of their statements was verified: the color of War Admiral’s blanket, the precise time of Seabiscuit’s half-mile split, a quip Red made seventy years ago. Ultimately, I gathered an almost uninterrupted memory record of the story I wished to tell from those who recall the sound, the smell, the feel of it, and who divulged secrets, such as Red’s blind eye, that finally solved mysteries more than half a century old.

The completion of this book is tinged with sadness, as several of those who helped create it didn’t live to see it in print. Among them was Sonny Greenberg. A bug boy with Red Pollard and George Woolf, Sonny was, he cheerfully admitted, a pathologically bad jockey, once steering a horse around a turn with such ineptitude that he “lost more ground than when the Indians sold Manhattan for a string of beads and a bottle of whiskey.” Sonny may not have had Woolf’s skill, but he was an astute observer of life in the Howard barn and racing in its golden era. Putting up with at least seven hours of my questions, Sonny animated life in Seabiscuit’s time—the purr of Woolf’s blue Cord roadster, the torment of reducing and the taste of jalap, the wicked, misunderstood humor of Tom Smith. Sonny, who in racetrack lingo told me that his advanced age left him “on the ‘also eligible’ list—I could draw in at any time,” drew in on May 6, 2000. It was Derby day.

On two of the most fascinating days of my career, Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, Jr., told me in candid detail how he masterminded one of the most spellbinding sporting events in American history, the meeting between Seabiscuit and War Admiral. Vanderbilt went on to own a magnificent gray horse named Native Dancer, who lost only one race, the Kentucky Derby, by less than a foot. Vanderbilt stayed in racing for two thirds of a century, even after macular degeneration left him unable to see his beloved runners. In November 1999, he spent the last hours of his life at the track, handing out cookies at Belmont Park. I will never forget his eloquence, his wit, and his magnanimity.

Other generous contributors who passed away before the completion of this book include the brilliant trainer Woody Stephens, who spent a couple of long afternoons telling me about his youth as a jockey; his equally accomplished archrival and friend Charlie Whittingham; Lucien Laurin, trainer of Secretariat; former jockey Sam Renick; former Turf and Sport Digest editor Raleigh Burroughs (“Honey,” he told me a few months before his death, “there is nobody else who is older than I am; I’ve got patina all over me”); and trainer Henry Clark.

The list of others whose stories fill this book is lengthy. I long ago ran out of words of gratitude for Colonel Michael C. Howard, United States Marine Corps. The great-grandson of Charles Howard and the grandson of Lin Howard, he trusted me with the treasures of his family—scrapbooks, photographs, cards, personal notes, clippings—and gave me immeasurable assistance and encouragement in reconstructing this story. From the beginning of this project to the end, Colonel Howard went to enormous effort to furnish me with the information that has given this story color and depth. His kindness and generosity will always be an inspiration to me.

I contacted Helen Luther and her husband, Tommy, one of the finest jockeys of his era and the true father of the Jockey’s Guild, in hopes of finding a little information on Red Pollard; I emerged with a lifetime of stories and a set of surrogate grandparents. Abundant thanks also go to Pollard’s daughter, writer Norah Pollard Christianson, and his sister, Edie Pollard Wilde, who entrusted me with intimate and sometimes painful details of the life of the Cougar. Wad Studley, who can talk horse with the best of them, taught me about the wilder side of Tijuana and the stranger nicknames of the racing oval. Bill Buck, who grew up with Red and George, was my greatest source on their bug boy days. Noble Threewitt, without whom Tom Smith and Charles Howard would never have met, told me about rooming in a stall with Smith in Tijuana; Noble’s wife, Beryl, shared her recollections of George. The gifted horsemen Keith Stucki and Farrell “Wild Horse” Jones thrilled me with tales of what it was like to skim over the track aboard Seabiscuit and offered an inside view of the Howard barn. Bill Nichols recreated Ridgewood, where he worked as a ranch hand. Jane Babcock Akins, daughter of Doc Babcock, told me of the day Frankie Howard died. Johnny Longden took me back to George’s school days.

I am also grateful to trainer Jimmy Jones, who survived the rampage of Tijuana’s manure mountain and the leviathan that was Ten Ton Irwin. Harold Washburn told me about Smith’s homemade bell, the match with War Admiral, and the legend of the Iceman. Joe “Mossy” Mosbacher taught me about life on the road for bug boys. Leonard Dorfman put me in the grandstand as Seabiscuit accelerated alongside Stagehand in the 1938 hundred-grander, a performance so extraordinary and heartbreaking that it brought him to tears. Ralph Theroux, Sr., gave me a glimpse of the Seabiscuit–War Admiral match race from the infield, at least the part he saw before the steeplechase fence he was standing on collapsed. Jack Shettlesworth told me what Red really said to George in their notorious 1938 NBC radio interview. Mike Griffin, disabled in a 1930s racing spill, taught me about the perils of a jockey’s life. Eddie McMullen spoke of Pollard as an older rider. George Mohr and Larry Soroka took me inside the Fitzsimmons barn. Thomas Bell, Jr., reminisced about Tom Smith and his father’s life on the racing circuit. Gerard Oberle described the day Seabiscuit was to meet War Admiral at Suffolk Downs.

Kathy Gold, R.N., of the Diabetes Wellness and Research Foundation, explained diabetes treatment in the 1930s. George Pratt, Ph.D., of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, instructed me on the physics of the racehorse. Matthew Mackay-Smith, DVM, medical editor of EQUUS, treated me to his boundless wisdom on equine veterinary medicine. Marvin Bensman, Ph.D., University of Memphis (www.people.memphis.edu/~mbensman/welcome.html), answered my questions on the history of radio.

Thanks also to Frank Whiteley, Joe Perrato, Howard “Gelo” Hall, Betty Raines, Bill Boland, Hugh Morgan, Barbara Howard, Michelle and Charles Howard III, Warren Stute, Bart Baker, John Wilke, John Nerud, Rex Henshaw, DVM, Mike Salamy, Daniel Guiney, Bob Nanni, Richard Holland, Bobby DeStasio, Joe Dattilo, Ken Hart, J.R. Buck Perry, Jr., Buddy Abadie, Elmer L. Taylor, Achilles Zephirius Achilles (“Ace”), Dale Duspiva, Fred Dayton, Don Mankiewicz, and Art Bardine.

Many people assisted me in tracking down facts and sources. The freakishly efficient Tina Hines provided indispensable help as a research assistant, digging up documents at the Keeneland Library; Keeneland’s Cathy Schenck and Phyllis Rogers pored over their archives in search of books and photos. Chick Lang, who knows where all the bodies are buried, scoured the industry to locate interviewees. Jane Goldstein and Stuart Zanville at Santa Anita found sources and photos. Debie Ginsburg, Karen Bowman, Joanne Tober, and Jessica Appleby at the Thoroughbred of California and the Burke Memorial Library mailed reams of information. Patricia Ranft at the Blood-Horse made up an infinitely useful index. Tom Gilcoin and Dick Hamilton at the National Museum of Racing answered racing history questions. Kip Hannon sent terrific archive video of Seabiscuit’s races. Dorothy Ours, who knows the lives of Man o’ War and Samuel Riddle better than anyone on earth, answered a long string of questions.

Jenifer Van Deinse, Bob Curran, Eric Wing, Joan Lawrence, Howard Bass, and Tom Merritt of Thoroughbred Racing Communications and/or its successor, National Thoroughbred Racing Association Communications, answered questions, located sources, and helped check facts. Lynn Kennelly at the Willits, California, Chamber of Commerce raided her local library archives and emerged with priceless information. Vicki Vinson sent me memorabilia and wrote a marvelous article on this book. Jan Romanowski helped me discover information I’d missed and tracked down one of my most important sources when all my efforts failed. Jane Colihan at American Heritage advised me on obtaining photos. Susan Kennedy picked through Bay Meadows’s records in search of one elusive photo.

Suzan Stephenson at the Bowie, Maryland, Public Library’s Selima Room, a treasure trove of racing literature, helped me unearth volumes of information; Dian Hain told me of the Selima Room’s existence. John Ball and John Giovanni of the Jockey’s Guild helped me gather facts on the lives of jockeys of the 1930s. Paula Welch, formerly Special Projects Editor of the Daily Racing Form, found articles and helped in the photo hunt. Victoria Keith, founder/editor of Thoroughbred Champions (www.ThoroughbredChampions.com), and researcher/co-editor Kathleen Jones, served as valuable sources of facts and encouragement and sent Triple Crown–themed flowers. Dace Taube at the University of Southern California Library worked late to sift through photos. Joe Hirsch and Jay Hovdey of the Daily Racing Form, Tommy Trotter and Julie Hazelwood of Vessel Stallion Farm, Joseph Martin and Rick Snider of the Washington Times pointed me to excellent sources. Jim Maloney sent clippings. Richard Needles sent his fine artwork of Seabiscuit. Richard Brunner sent racing records.

Thanks also to Billy Turner, trainer of Seattle Slew; Kit Collins; Diane Brunn at the University of Kentucky Agricultural Library; Arlene Mott at Interlibrary Loan in Rockville, Maryland; Martha Cantarini at the historical racing site Second Running (www.secondrunning.com); Steven Crist, Irwin Cohen, and Logan Bailey of the Daily Racing Form; Mark Shrager; Dale Austin; Ronnie Nichols; Leon Rasmussen; Andrew Beyer of The Washington Post; Tracy Negrin; Sean Lahman; John Thorn; Bob Kaplan; Steve Murtaugh; Cricket Goodall; Debbie McCain; Becky Shields; Dave Hicks of NYRA; Gary McMillen; James Lehr; Warren Bare; Gary Madieros; and the National Agricultural Library.

My special thanks go to Richard F. Snow, editor of American Heritage, for helping me get this project off the ground. In the fall of 1996, Richard saw the potential of this story in my query letter and gave me the honor of contributing to his splendid magazine, which has been my addiction for as long as I can remember.

Perhaps the greatest privilege I have enjoyed in producing this book has been the opportunity to work with my agent, the exceptionally skilled, kind, invincible Tina Bennett. A woman with the perfect solution to any dilemma, Tina helped me transform an article into a book proposal, then into a manuscript, assisting me in shaping my thoughts, offering valuable criticism, and making my dream of telling this story to the world a reality. My eternal gratitude goes to Isaac Barchas for introducing me to Tina. Thanks also go to Tina’s assistant, Svetlana Katz.

Susan Avallon read at least ten drafts of one section of this book, but never complained, and her criticisms improved the work enormously. My EQUUS editors, Emily Kilby and Laurie Prinz, pored over my rough draft and gave me the benefit of the expertise that has made their magazine a paragon of excellence. Professor Megan Macomber, who has been gently guiding my work since my freshman year at Kenyon in 1985, once again treated me to her marvelous instinct for words. Journalist Susie Hiss Thomas did a careful reading of the first stabs at this story and offered her wisdom. Thanks also to my mother, Elizabeth Hillenbrand, who helped in innumerable ways to get me through this long and sometimes difficult process.

I am deeply indebted to my editor at Random House, Jonathan Karp, who saw the promise in this story and gave me the best possible forum in which to tell it. Jon was always enthusiastic, made house calls when I could not come to him, and studied the manuscript with a sharp eye. My work is vastly better for his keen judgment. I also send thanks to Jon’s assistant, Janelle Duryea.

Since the day in 1996 when it first occurred to me that a book should be written about these men, Borden Flanagan has given his unwavering support, infinite patience, and tireless assistance. He has set aside much of his own life to pore over each of my drafts, offer insights, and smooth my prose. My manuscript has benefited immeasurably from his command of language and ideas. Without him, this story would have remained untold. He has my most profound gratitude.

My final thanks go to Tom Smith, Charles and Marcela Howard, Red Pollard, and George Woolf for living lives of singular vigor and grace, and for giving us the incomparable, unforgettable Seabiscuit.

Laura Hillenbrand

September 2000

NOTES

A note on sources: As I researched my subjects for this book, Colonel Michael C. Howard, great-grandson of Charles and Marcela Howard, generously gave me access to the private scrapbooks of Charles and Marcela Howard. These books included a wealth of newspaper and magazine clippings, photographs, telegrams, and letters, some of which do not include complete publishing information. In the following section, I indicate these incompletely annotated sources with the abbreviation SB. In a few cases, it is unclear whether the dates on these materials indicate the dates on which the articles were filed by their authors, or the dates on which they appeared in print. In instances in which the date specified is a filing date, I have used the abbreviation FD. In most cases, articles appear in print on the day after they are filed.

PREFACE

1

the year’s number-one newsmaker: “Looking ’Em Over,”

San Francisco News, SB

, January 1939; B. K. Beckwith,

Seabiscuit: The Saga of a Great Champion

(Willfred Crowell, 1940) p. 33.

2

forty million listeners: “Seabiscuit Stands Out,”

The Pay Off

, November 1938.

3

seventy-eight thousand people witnessed his last race:

There They Go: Racing Calls by Joe Hernandez

, album released by Los Angeles Turf Club, n.d.

4

population was less than half its current size: Irvine, E. Eastman, ed.,

World Almanac 1938

(New York: New York World-Telegram, 1938) p. 241; Robert Famighetti, ed.,

The World Almanac and Book of Facts 1997

(New Jersey: K-III Reference Corp., 1996), p. 377.

5

attendance comparable to Super Bowl: Jorgen Lyxell, “Super Bowl” online article (San Francisco: Jorgen Lyxell; accessed September 13, 2000);

www.acc.umu.se/~lyxell/superbowl/

.

6

forty thousand fans see workout: “40,000 See Howard’s Champion,”

The Baltimore Sun

, November 2, 1938.

7

fifty thousand exhausting railroad miles: M. A. Stoneridge,

Great Horses of Our Time

(New York: Doubleday, 1972), p. 34.

CHAPTER 1

1

21 cents: “Charles S. Howard,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, June 7, 1950, p. 1.

2

cavalry: Michael C. Howard, telephone interview, January 18, 1997.

3

racing bicycles: Terry Dunham, “The Howard Automobile Company,” manuscript from the papers of Marcela Howard, July 1975.

4

“devilish contraptions”: “My Thirty Years in the Press Box,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, February 6, 1937.

5

Anti-automobile laws: Floyd Clymer,

Those Wonderful Old Automobiles

(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1953), p. 30.

6

automobile ban at Stanford: “Charles S. Howard,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, June 7, 1950, p. 2.

7

“Accessories”: “My Thirty Years in the Press Box,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, February 6, 1937; Clymer,

Those Wonderful Old Automobiles

, p. 67.

8

refueling at pharmacies: William M. Klinger, “Pioneering Automobile Insurance” online article (San Francisco: Museum of the City of San Francisco, accessed February 24, 1998);

www.sfmuseum.org

.

9

“windshield hats”: Clymer,

Those Wonderful Old Automobiles

, p. 22.

10

road signs … erected … by insurance underwriter: Klinger, “Pioneering Automobile Insurance.”

11

“picnic parties”: Ibid.

12

Automobile-repair shops: Ibid.; Michael C. Howard, telephone interview, January 18, 1997.

13

first American race: Clymer,

Those Wonderful Old Automobiles

, p. 57.

14

The European race … halted due to “too many fatalities”: Ibid., p. 26.

15

Howard gains Buick franchise: Dunham, “The Howard Automobile Company.”

16

three Buicks: “Automotive Highlights,”

Los Angeles Times

, March 24, 1940, p. 3.

17

housed automobiles in parlor of bicycle-repair shop: Tom Moriarty, “California Sportsman,”

Rob Wagner’s Script

, March 18, 1938, p. 8.

18

four city blocks per hour: Louise Herrick Wall, “Heroic San Francisco” online article (San Francisco: Museum of the City of San Francisco; accessed February 24, 1998);

www.sfmuseum.org/1906/06.html

.

19

“We suddenly appreciated …”: Emma Burke, untitled article,

Outlook

, June 1906.

20

Van Ness as firebreak: Wall, “Heroic San Francisco.”

21

blew up shop: Moriarty, “California Sportsman,” p. 8.

22

cars used as ambulances: Michael C. Howard, telephone interview, January 18, 1997; Dunham, “The Howard Automobile Company.”

23

day’s rental of a horse and buggy: Wall, “Heroic San Francisco.”

24

Robert Stewart: Michael C. Howard, telephone interview, January 18, 1997.

25

auto racing in 1906 San Francisco: Klinger, “Pioneering Automobile Insurance.”

26

Howard racing cars: “Charles S. Howard,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, June 7, 1950, p. 2; Dunham, “The Howard Automobile Company.”

27

Howard advertises wins: Dunham, “The Howard Automobile Company.”

28

“horse is past …”: Ralph Moody,

Come On Seabiscuit

(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963), p. 22

29

sold eighty-five White Streaks: “Charles S. Howard,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, June 7, 1950, p. 2.

30

Durant gave Howard sole distributorship: Dunham, “The Howard Automobile Company.”

31

GM bailout: “Charles S. Howard,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, June 7, 1950, p. 2; “Yea, Verily,”

SB

, fall 1937.10

32

Charles S. Howard Foundation: “Howard, Charles Stewart,”

National Cyclopedia of American Biography, p

. 27.

33

expedition to Galápagos: Dunham, “The Howard Automobile Company.”

34

Frank’s accident and aftermath: “Frank Howard Killed,”

The Willits News

, May 14, 1926, p. 1; Jane Babcock Akins, telephone interview, November 12, 1999.

35

Howard cries over painting: Bill Nichols, telephone interview, January 14, 1998.

36

Tijuana: T. D. Proffitt, III,

Tijuana: The History of a Mexican Metropolis

(San Diego: San Diego University Press, 1994), pp. 190–98; Wad Studley, telephone interview, February 6, 1999.

37

target practice: Wad Studley, telephone interview, March 2, 1999.

38

Three hundred tracks had been operating: Tom Biracree and Wendy Insinger,

The Complete Book of Thoroughbred Horse Racing

(Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1982), p. 143.

39

departing Hollywood film crew: Sonny Greenberg, telephone interview, December 24, 1999.

40

Howard to Tijuana: Carter Swart, “The Howards of San Francisco,”

Northern California Thoroughbred

, fall 1981, p. 111.

41

Howard loses interest in automobiles: Tom Moriarty, “California Sportsman,”

Rob Wagner’s Script

, March 18, 1938.

42

Meeting Marcela: Swart, “The Howards of San Francisco,” p. 111.

43

Blooey: “A Blue Monkey Visits New York,”

New York American, SB

, 1935.

44

Giannini: Joe Estes, “Thoroughbred Farms in California,”

Blood-Horse, SB

, n.d., p. 676.

45

“Doc” Strub: David Alexander,

A Sound of Horses

(New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1966), pp. 51–70; Mary Fleming,

A History of the Thoroughbred in California

(Arcadia, Cal.: California Thoroughbred Breeders Association, 1983), pp. 95–97.

46

1935 average income: Eastman,

Almanac 1938

, p. 288.

47

“hunnert-grander”: “Seabiscuit’s Past,”

Los Angeles Times, SB

, winter 1938.

48

America’s most heavily attended sport: Tom Gilcoin, telephone interview, February 28, 1997.

CHAPTER 2

1

A journalist who had watched Smith: “Like Mike and Ike,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, n.d.

2

chop off his own toe: Alexander,

A Sound of Horses

, p. 185.

3

“Lone Plainsman”: “Like Mike and Ike,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, n.d.

4

Smith’s history: Obituary,

Blood-Horse

, January 19, 1957, p. 338; “Alarm Clock for Training,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, 1936; “Seabiscuit Makes Debut,”

Los Angeles Times

, December 28, 1936; “They Do Come Back,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, fall 1939; Moody,

Come On Seabiscuit

, pp. 23–29; “Seabiscuit Trainer History,”

Morning Telegraph, SB

, fall 1937.

5

“Cowboy Charlie”: Willard Porter, “Big Charlie Irwin,”

True West

, September 1987, pp. 38–43; “Riddle Walked In,”

SB

, fall 1938; “Old West Cowboy Dies,”

The New York Times

, March 24, 1934, p. 1; “450 Pound Horseman,” uncredited clipping, n.d.; Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998; Wad Studley, telephone interview, February 6, 1999; Tommy Bell, telephone interview, June 22, 1999; Keith Stucki, telephone interview, March 25, 1998; Noble Threewit, telephone interview, January 17, 1998; Jimmy Jones, telephone interview, February 3, 1999; “Seabiscuit’s Trainer Pupil of Famous Cowboy Irwin,”

SB

, 1937.

6

Work under Irwin: “Tom Smith Sets Sights,”

San Francisco News

, March 27, 1939; Keith Stucki, telephone interview, March 25, 1998.

7

Indian reservations: “Riddle Walked In,”

SB

, fall 1938.

8

Knighthood: “They Do Come Back,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, fall 1939.

9

squatting down on floor: “Alarm Clock for Training,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, 1936.

10

watching a horse … for hours: “Kayak II and the ‘Biscuit’; A Namesake Turns Out Well,”

Blood-Horse

, February 24, 1951, p. 432.

11

“I’d rather depend on my eye …”: Ibid.

12

“It’s easy to talk to a horse …”: Theodus Carroll,

Firsts Under the Wire: The World’s Fastest Horses

(New York: Contemporary Perspectives, 1978), p. 29.

13

“Learn your horse …”: “Seabiscuit Makes Debut,”

Los Angeles Times, De

cember 28, 1936.

14

Oriley: Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998; “History of Silent Tom Smith,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form, SB

, March 1939; “Silent Tom Smith,”

SB

, March 16, 1940.

15

living out of a horse stall: Noble Threewit, telephone interview, January 17, 1998.

16

“the best trainer …”: Joe Estes, “Thoroughbred Farms in California,”

Blood-Horse, SB

, n.d., p. 676.

CHAPTER 3

1

Smith’s clothes: “Best San Francisco Horse,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, late 1936.

2

hat story: “Silent Tom Smith,”

SB

, March 16, 1940.

3

alarm clock: “Alarm Clock for Training,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, 1936.

4

Smith discovers Seabiscuit: Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 25; “Hey for Seabiscuit,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, May 14, 1938.

5

duck waddle: Stoneridge,

Great Horses of Our Time

, p. 35.

6

“mostly in his heart …”: Ibid.

7

“I’ll see you again …”: Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 25.

8

Fitzsimmons: Jimmy Breslin,

Sunny Jim: The Life of America’s Most Beloved Horseman

(Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1962).

9

track built around house: Breslin,

Sunny Jim

, pp. 78–79.

10

Hastings/Man o’ War: Peter Chew, “The Mostest Hoss,”

American Heritage

, April 1971, pp. 24–29, 90–95.

11

War Relic: Tommy Luther, telephone interview, February 2, 1998.

12

Hard Tack: Joe Hernandez, “The Horse of Iron,”

Turf and Sport Digest

, November 1938, p. 26.

13

foreleg jabbed out: “Seabiscuit, the All-American Winner,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, spring 1938.

14

“Runty little thing …”: Moody,

Come On Seabiscuit

, p. 3.

15

“so small … you might mistake …”: “A Testament,”

SB

, November 1938.

16

equine sleeping habits: Dale Leatherman, “While You Were Sleeping,”

EQUUS

, April 1996, pp. 36–38; Bobbie Lieberman, “Your Horse’s Biological Clocks,”

EQUUS

, February 1984, pp. 40–45.

17

had to wake horse up in morning: Charles Hatton, “This Is a Horse,”

Turf and Sport Digest

, January 1939, pp. 16–32.

18

Seabiscuit’s behavior: Ibid., pp. 16–32; “Sports,”

Newsweek, SB

, March 1940.

19

left him in a van: “Seabiscuit’s a Dempsey Sort,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, n.d.

20

“I thought he simply couldn’t run …”: “Seabiscuit’s Story,”

San Francisco News

, March 6, 1940.

21

“He struck me … as a bird …”: Hatton, “This Is a Horse,” pp. 16–32.

22

Use of whip: “Seabiscuit’s Story,”

San Francisco News

, March 6, 1940; “Seabiscuit’s Final Test Today,”

New York Sun

, May 24, 1938; Hatton, “This Is a Horse,” pp. 16–32; “The Judge’s Stand,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form, SB

, n.d.; “Sports,”

Newsweek, SB

, March 1940.

23

“Mean, restive and ragged …”: Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 21.

24

“He had something when he wanted …”: B. K. Beckwith,

Step and Go Together

(South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1967), p. 113.

25

“pretty nice hoss …”: “In the Paddock,”

SB

, February 1939.

26

pawning off horse as polo pony: “Things and People,”

Blood-Horse

, February 18, 1950, p.400.

27

Howards find Seabiscuit/lemonade wager: Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 25–26; Michael C. Howard, telephone interview, January 18, 1997.

28

“Better come and see …”: Beckwith,

Step and Go Together

, p. 113.

29

“Get me that horse …”: “Turf King,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, n.d.

30

“I fell in love with him …”: Beckwith,

Step and Go Together

, p. 114.

31

trial race: “Smith Recalls Stipulation That Could’ve Stopped Seabiscuit Sale,”

Daily Racing Form

, February 13, 1953; “Biscuit’s Best Race Recalled,”

SB

, November 3, 1938; “The Judge’s Stand,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form

, March 7, 1940.

32

“I can’t describe the feeling …”: Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 27.

33

Seabiscuit might … win another purse: “Turf King,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, n.d.

34

“Deal or no deal?”: Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 27.

35

“Looks like they got a new saddle horse …”: Farrell Jones, telephone interview, November 4, 1998.

CHAPTER 4

1

“His win percentage had dropped …”: Source:

Daily Racing Form

, Monthly Edition, August, 1936, Volume XVI, No 8. 1936 by Regal Press, Inc.,p. 22.

2

Red Pollard’s history: Edith Wilde, telephone interview, February 2, 1998; Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998; “Pollard’s Bricks Helped Build City,”

Strathcona Plaindealer

, Summer 1983, p. 1; “Jockey Pollard Recovering,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form, SB

, July 1938; David Alexander, “Four Good Legs Between Them,”

Blood-Horse

, December 24, 1955, pp. 1558–63.

3

bartering gasoline for groceries: Edith Wilde, telephone interview, February 2, 1998.

4

hitching the horse to his toboggan: Ibid.

5

“the body of a dancer …”: Norah Christianson, telephone interview, January 26, 1998.

6

ovals cut through hayfields: Keith Stucki, telephone interview, March 25, 1998.

7

elite quarter horses have been clocked at peak speeds of well over fifty miles per hour: George Pratt, e-mail interview, April 10, 1998.

8

abandoned at track: Edith Wilde, telephone interview, February 2, 1998.

9

dirty tactics: Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998; Keith Stucki, telephone interview, March 25, 1998.

10

“I was trying to kill that Cuban …”: “Eddie Arcaro, ‘The Master,’ Is Dead at 81,”

Los Angeles Times

, November 15, 1997, p. C11.

11

“To succeed in those days …”: Eddie Arcaro,

I Ride to Win!

(New York: Greenberg, 1951), p. 45.

12

boxing: Alexander, “Four Good Legs,” pp. 1558–63; Alexander,

A Sound of Horses

, p. 182.

13

nicknames: Wad Studley, telephone interview, February 6, 1999.

14

bug boys: Tommy Luther, telephone interview, February 2, 1998; Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998; B. K. Beckwith,

The Longden Legend

(New Jersey: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1973), p. 33.

15

imposts and lengths: Biracree and Insinger,

The Complete Book of Thoroughbred Horse Racing

, p. 210.

16

“I was hungry …”: “Long Ride Over for Jockey Neves,”

Los Angeles Times

, July 8, 1995, p. C1; “Neves, Howard Rider,”

SB

, n.d.

17

“Father” Bill Daly: Alexander,

A Sound of Horses

, pp. 170–72.

18

“Who hit you in the butt …”: Bill Buck, telephone interview January 27, 1998.

19

Preservator: “There They Go!,”

Daily Racing Tab, SB

, fall 1939.

20

two saddles, a handful of bridles and two sacks of oats: “There They Go,”

Daily Racing Tab, SB

, fall 1937.

21

riding with somewhat longer stirrups: Eddie McMullen, telephone interview, February 5, 1999.

22

Woolf’s clothing: David Alexander, “New England Racing,”

Blood-Horse

, August 1, 1942, p. 160.

23

“fightin’ bulldog …”: Alan Goodrich, “All-Time Greatest Jockey,”

Sir!

, March 1951, p.22.

24

Woolf’s history: Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998; “Seabiscuit Cinch,”

San Francisco Examiner

, October 27, 1938; “Georgie Woolf,”

SB

, n.d.; “The Sun,”

Baltimore Sun

, October 30, 1938, p. 1; “Georgie Woolf Tops Jockeys,”

San Francisco Examiner

, April 16, 1938, p. 22.

25

“Must have been born on one …”: Carey Alexander, “Woolf Is Top Money Rider in America,”

Cheers

, March 1941, p. 6.

26

“as natural as walking …”: “By Bud Spencer,”

Los Angeles Times

, November 4, 1944.

27

“I’ll be with them until I die …”: “The Iceman Dies,”

Blood-Horse

, February 23, 1946, p. 86.

28

Pickpocket: Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998.

29

“hold an elephant …”: “Great Stakes Reinsman Honored Today,” George Woolf Memorial pamphlet, February 10, 1949, p. 1.

30

skill: Goodrich, “All-Time Greatest Jockey,” p. 66; Joseph Mosbacher, telephone interview, November 19, 1998.

31

visualize race: Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998.

32

George sets tack on fire: Goodrich, “All-Time Greatest Jockey,” p. 66.

33

“he was a better rider …”: Joseph Mosbacher, telephone interview, November 19, 1998.

34

“saying … the wrong thing at the wrong time …”: Alexander, “New England Racing,” p. 160.

35

“We got a party of our own …”: Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998.

36

rodeo story: Harold Washburn, telephone interview, November 9, 1998; “Match Race,”

SB

.

37

teasing Whitey: “Great Stakes Reinsman Honored Today,” p. 4.

38

beaten in a photo finish: “Woolf Blames Bumping,”

SB

, March 5, 1938.

39

“Big head, little ass …”: Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998.

40

“icemen and traveling salesmen …”: Alexander, “New England Racing,” p. 160.

41

“the strength to blow out a candle …”: Ibid., p. 159.

CHAPTER 5

1

Thomas Dowell: “Death of Jockey Dowell,”

Thoroughbred Record

, July 1938.

2

“will all but saw their legs off …”: Arcaro,

I Ride to Win!

, p. 49.

3

eating dehydrated lettuce: Ibid.

4

sight of water agonizing: Breslin,

Sunny Jim

, p. 128.

5

“road work”: Chick Lang, telephone interview, January 23, 1998; Woody Stephens, telephone interview, January 13, 1998.

6

DeLara: Joe H. Palmer,

This Was Racing

(New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1953), p. 22.

7

virtuosos of defecation: Helen Luther, telephone interview, March 6, 1998.

8

“Frenchy” Hawley:

Jockey’s Guild Year Book, 1945

(New York: Jockey’s Guild, 1945), pp. 47–49; Tommy Luther, telephone interview, February 2, 1998; Helen Luther, telephone interview, March 6, 1998.

9

Greenberg’s reducing: Sonny Greenberg, telephone interview, December 24, 1999.

10

lost

thirteen

pounds: Breslin,

Sunny Jim

, pp. 130–32.

11

“biggest disappointment of my life …”: Woody Stephens, with James Brough,

Guess I’m Lucky

, (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1985), p. 39.

12

athleticism study:

Jockey

(video), Tel-Air Productions, 1980.

13

“a situation of dynamic imbalance …”: A. E. Waller, et al., “Jockey Injuries in the United States,”

Journal of the American Medical Association

, 2000; vol. 283, no. 10.

14

“the ultimate impossibility …”: Beckwith,

The Longden Legend

, p. 33.

15

lengths lost on turns: Eric Wing, National Thoroughbred Racing Association e-mail interview, May 2000.

16

two hundred or more falls:

Jockey

(video), Tel-Air Productions, 1980.

17

three thousand pounds of force: George Pratt, e-mail interview, February 13, 1998.

18

current jockey injury rates: John Giovanni, telephone interview, January 23, 1998.

19

Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago:

The Jockey

News, June/July 1999, p. 58.

20

one in every five injuries is to head or neck: Waller, et al., “Jockey Injuries in the United States.”

21

13 percent of jockeys suffered concussions: J. M. Press, P. D. Davis, S. L. Wiesner, et al., “The National Jockey Injury Study: An Analysis of Injuries to Professional Horse-Racing Jockeys,”

Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine

, 1993; 5:236–40.

22

Nineteen jockeys killed between 1935 and 1939: Ron Farra,

Jockeying for a Change

(Saratoga Springs, N.Y.: Saratoga Mountain Press, 1998), p. 69.

23

jockey headgear: Mike Griffin, telephone interview, January 23, 1998; Johnny Longden, telephone interview, January 13, 1998; Woody Stephens, telephone interview, January 13, 1998.

24

“Sandy Graham”: Tommy Luther, telephone interview, February 2, 1998.

25

Donoghue: Steve Donoghue,

Donoghue Up!

(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1938), pp. 234–42, 126–30.

26

Ralph Neves: “Long Ride Over for Jockey Neves,”

Los Angeles Times

, July 8, 1995, p. C1; “Resurrected,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, May 9, 1936, p. A1; Barbara Mikkelson, “Jockey Shorted,” online article (Urban Legends Reference Pages; accessed September 14, 2000);

www.snopes.com/spoons/noose/neves.htm

; “Rider Who Came Back to Life Feels ‘Great’,”

Los Angeles Times

, May 10, 1936; “Jockey Back from Dead,”

Los Angeles Times

, May 9, 1936.

27

“it could get awfully rough out there …”: Arcaro,

I Ride to Win!

, p. 45.

28

“You didn’t talk about it …”: Farrell Jones, telephone interview, November 4, 1998.

29

“… cannot be blotted out …”: Arcaro,

I Ride to Win!

, p. 42.

30

Empire City: Tommy Luther, telephone interview, February 2, 1998.

31

“the horse, … he

takes

you …”: Steve Murtaugh, telephone interview, May 2000.

32

living “all the way up …”: Ernest Hemingway,

The Sun Also Rises

(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1926), p. 10.

CHAPTER 6

1

Molino Rojo: Sonny Greenberg, telephone interview, December 24, 1999; Joseph Mosbacher, telephone interview, November 19, 1998; Farrell Jones, telephone interview, November 4, 1998.

2

“the house of the wilted pigeons …”: Wad Studley, telephone interview, March 2, 1999.

3

Quoting Shakespeare in the jocks’ room: Farrell Jones, telephone interview, November 4, 1998.

4

Bear story, twitch story: “The Post Parade,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form

, September 2, 1937, FD; Horace Wade, “Tales of the Turf,”

Turf and Sport Digest

, October 1958, p. 16.

5

fight … over checkers match: Farrell Jones, telephone interview, November 4, 1998.

6

“Ride ’em, cowboy!”: Carey Alexander, “Woolf Is Top Money Rider,”

Cheers

, March 1941, p. 6.

7

black market in his shoes: Joseph Mosbacher, telephone interview, November 19, 1998.

8

Phar Lap’s kangaroo saddle: Alan Goodrich, “All-Time Greatest Jockey,”

Sir!

, March 1951, p. 67.

9

“I am going to be a jockey!”: Harold Washburn, telephone interview, November 9, 1998.

10

rides half naked: Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998; Goodrich, “All-Time Greatest Jockey,” p. 66.

11

Woolf and Genevieve: Sonny Greenberg, telephone interview, December 24, 1999.

12

“How can I keep away?”: “Me and the Biscuit,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, February 15, 1940, p. 4H.

13

manure sitting/flood: Jimmy Jones, telephone interview, February 3, Wad Studley, telephone interview, March 2, 1999; Tommy Luther, telephone interview, February 2, 1998; Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998; Chick Lang, telephone interview, January 23, 1998.

14

Woolf and Gallant Sir: Noble Threewit, telephone interview, January 17, 1998.

15

George sleeping: Goodrich, “All-Time Greatest Jockey,” pp. 65–66; Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998.

16

diabetes: “Turf in Review,”

Daily Racing Form

, January 8, 1949;

Jockey’s Guild Year Book

, pp. 40–41; Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998; Kathy Gold, R.N., telephone interview, Diabetes Research and Wellness Foundation, 1999; Sonny Greenberg, telephone interview, December 24, 1999.

17

three times

as many horses: “By Bud Spencer,”

Los Angeles Times

, November 4, 1944.

18

“the Desperate Dude”: Goodrich, “All-Time Greatest Jockey,” p. 65.

19

reinforced saddle: “Turf in Review,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form

, January 8, 1949.

20

Red blinded: Edith Wilde, telephone interview, February 2, 1998; Norah Christianson, telephone interview, January 26, 1998.

21

“only word he knows is yes …”: “Sports,”

New York Journal American, SB

, fall 1938.

22

Mexico banned gambling: “Biscuit Given Big Edge,”

SB

, March 26, 1938, FD.

23

Yummy: David Alexander, “Four Good Legs Between Them,”

Blood-Horse

, December 24, 1955, pp. 1558–1563; Alexander,

A Sound of Horses

, pp. 184–85, 187; Harold Washburn, telephone interview, November 9, 1998; Keith Stucki, telephone interview, February 11, 1999; Sonny Greenberg, telephone interview, December 24, 1999.

24

Pollard’s six percent win average: Jockey statistics for 1/11/36 to 8/25/36,

Daily Racing Form

, August 1936.

25

car wreck: “King of Horses,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form

, March 17, 1940.

26

27 cents: Alexander,

A Sound of Horses

, pp. 184–85.

27

Pollard meets Seabiscuit: “King of Horses,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form

, March 17, 1940; Moody,

Come On Seabiscuit

, pp. 35–37.

CHAPTER 7

1

so thin that hips could have made a passable hat rack: “Both Barrels,”

San Francisco Call-Bulletin

, March 2, 1940, FD.

2

Seabiscuit’s condition and behavior, Smith’s treatment: Keith Stucki, telephone interview, March 25, 1998; Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 30; “Seabiscuit Makes Debut,”

Los Angeles Times

, December 28, 1936; “Seabiscuit Was Bad Boy,” SB; “Seabiscuit Trainer Says He’s Another Discovery,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, February 13, 1937; “Seabiscuit Crossed Up Clockers,”

Los Angeles

Times, March 1, 1937; “Seabiscuit Was a Stall Walker,”

SB

, fall 1937.

3

wooden-legged racetrack cat: Palmer,

This Was Racing

, p. 226.

4

goat: “Seabiscuit Was Bad Boy,” SB; Beckwith,

Seabiscuit, p

. 36.

5

JoJo, Pocatell: Joe Hernandez, “Horse of Iron,”

Turf and Sport Digest

, November 1938 p. 66; Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 40.

6

feed: “Hey for Seabiscuit,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, May 14, 1938; Moody,

Come On Seabiscuit

, p. 89; “Both Barrels,”

San Francisco Call-Bulletin

, March 5, 1940.

7

Let him go:

“Seabiscuit Makes Debut,”

Los Angeles Times

, December 28, 1936.

8

“Why rate him?”: “To the Point,”

San Francisco Examiner

, March 3, 1940, section 2, p. 2.

9

allowing horse to do as he pleased: “Hugh Bradley Says,”

New York Post, SB

, May 1938.

10

swerving around dogs: “Seabiscuit Crossed Up Clockers,”

Los Angeles Times

, March 1, 1937.

11

adjust the horse’s speed with steering: Keith Stucki, telephone interview, March 25, 1998.

12

gate training: Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 34.

13

“You got to go … slowly …”: Ibid.

14

Horse’s affection for Pollard, Smith: Charles Hatton, “This Is a Horse,”

Turf and Sport Digest

, pp. 16–32; “Hugh Bradley Says,”

New York Post, SB

, May 1938; “Hey for Seabiscuit,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, May 14, 1938.

15

“the best horseman …”: Keith Stucki, telephone interview, March 25, 1998.

16

Race against Myrtlewood: Hatton, “This Is a Horse,” pp. 16–32; “Biscuit Trainer Hails,”

San Francisco Examiner

, March 12, 1940.

17

“that horse can win the Santa Anita!”: “The Sun,”

The Baltimore

Sun, October 30, 1938, p. 1; “Difference of Opinion,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, February 21, 1940, FD.

18

“more natural inclination to run …”: “Seabiscuit Trainer Says He’s Another Discovery,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, February 13, 1937.

19

“as gentlemanly a horse …”: “Smith Recalls Stipulation That Could’ve Stopped Seabiscuit Sale,”

Daily Racing Form

, February 13, 1953.

20

“You don’t have to tell good horses …”: Alan Goodrich, “All-Time Greatest Jockey,”

Sir!

, March 1951, p. 66.

21

Exhibit workout: “Like Mike and Ike,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, winter 1936–37.

22

Sabueso: “Ligaroti Is Best Pampas Horse,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, fall 1937.

23

“Did you ever see two stallions fight?”: Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 43.

24

“Let’s head for California …”: Ibid., p. 33.

25

Seabiscuit and trains: Ibid., p. 30.

26

“hang on to your hats …”: Ibid., p. 33.

CHAPTER 8

1

put on two hundred pounds: “Seabiscuit’s Odds Cut,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, February 11, 1937,

FD

.

2

He’s burning the top right off the racetrack:

Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 34; “Best San Francisco Horse Is Seabiscuit,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, late 1936.

3

world record workout: “War Admiral Race Causes Comment,”

San Francisco Examiner, SB

.

4

Smith scared by Seabiscuit’s speed: Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 34.

5

stable hands were shocked: “Seabiscuit Looms as Favorite,”

SB

, December 1936.

6

Pollard brags about having time to shop during race: “May Import Foe from South,”

SB

, n.d.

7

Seabiscuit “overrated”: “Keep an Eye on Collier Candidate,”

Pasadena Star-News

, December 25, 1936; “Mutuel Bells,”

Glendale News-Press, December

24, 1936; “Seabiscuit Fails to Warrant Position,”

Los Angeles Times

, December 17, 1936.

8

rash: “Seabiscuit Gains in Skin Trouble,”

Glendale

News-Press, January 22, 1937; Moody,

Come On Seabiscuit

, pp. 65–66; Farrell Jones, telephone interview, January 28, 1998.

9

“Don’t tell me about bad breaks …”: Ibid.

10

Ollie overfeeding: “Seabiscuit Crossed Up Clockers,”

Los Angeles Times

, March 1, 1937.

11

Smith knew he had the best horse in America: “Seabiscuit’s Trainer Says He’s Another Discovery,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, February 13, 1937.

12

“If Seabiscuit loses …”: “Sports,”

New York Journal American

, August 7, 1937.

13

Howard betting: “Seabiscuit Threat to Sun Beau’s Record,”

Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express

, August 9, 1937.

14

running of ’37 hundred-grander: “The Inside Track,”

Los Angeles Herald and Express

, March 1, 1937; “Too Close for Comfort,”

Los Angeles Times

, February 28, 1937.

15

wire … close enough to touch: “Too Close for Comfort,”

Los Angeles Times

, February 28, 1937.

16

“faster, baby, faster …”: Ibid.

17

Howard’s premature celebration: “Sports,”

New York Journal American

, August 7, 1937, FD.

18

“Fortune … kissed the wrong horse …”: “There They Go,”

Daily Racing Tab, SB

, summer 1937.

19

Red and Harry talk: “The Inside Track,”

Los Angeles Herald and Express

, March 1, 1937; “Too Close for Comfort,”

Los Angeles Times

, February 28, 1937.

20

Neither he nor Smith blamed him: “Seabiscuit Totes 120,”

Los Angeles Times

, March 4, 1937; “The Inside Track,”

Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express

, August 11, 1937.

CHAPTER 9

1

85 million people a week: William Manchester,

The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America 1932–1972

(New York: Bantam Books, 1973), p. 120.

2

Radio history: Dr. Marvin R. Bensman, “Broadcasting History” online article (Memphis: Department of Communications, University of Memphis; accessed September 18, 2000);

www.people.memphis.edu/~mbensman/homes30.dat

.

3

Rural Electrification Administration, begun in 1936: “Rural Electrification Administration,” online article (Kansas: Kansas Electric Cooperatives, Inc.; accessed September 18, 2000);

www.kec.org

.

4

Golden Rod beer: “Yea, Verily,”

SB

, fall 1937.

5

Smith taciturn: Sonny Greenberg, telephone interview, December 24, 1999.

6

“He’s a horse …”: Alexander,

A Sound of Horses

, p. 185.

7

“long-distance conversationalist …”: “Seabiscuit Scores Hollow Triumph,”

San Francisco News, SB

, n.d.

8

sneak the horse out: “California Has New Turf Sensation in Seabiscuit,”

SB;

Keith Stucki, telephone interview, March 25, 1998.

9

“Damned if I know …”: “Smithiana,”

Thoroughbred Record

, February 23, 1957.

10

set out Seabiscuit’s bridle: Moody,

Come On Seabiscuit

, p. 163.

11

electrified a park bench: Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998.

12

“Turf writers and clockers swear …”: “Silent Tom Smith,”

SB

, March 16, 1940.

13

“Runs, though …”: Alexander,

A Sound of Horses

, p. 185.

14

“Seabiscuit and Greta Garbo …”: “Seabiscuit Turns in Sizzling Work,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, April 6, 1937,

FD

.

15

Howard goes to press box before races: “Seabiscuit Nips Track Record,”

The Boston Globe

, August 8, 1937, p. 24.

16

Howard tells reporters of itineraries: “Seabiscuit Rides Home,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, November 18, 1937.

17

Howard sends silver shoes to reporters: “Sports Mirror,”

SB

, December 1937; “Hit or Miss,”

Los Angeles Examiner

, February 15, 1938.

18

Howard’s champagne: “Cap’s Good Loser,”

SB

, March 4, 1937,

FD

.

19

“He’ll probably win …”: Alexander,

A Sound of Horses

, p. 178.

20

Oscar Otis’s excoriation of Pollard: “Jockey Richards Gives Rosemont Great Ride,”

Los Angeles Times

, February 28, 1937.

21

“Pollard deserves at least half the credit …”: “Seabiscuit Totes 120,”

Los Angeles Times

, March 4, 1937.

22

San Juan Capistrano: “Boots and Saddles,”

Santa Monica Outlook

, March 3, 1937, FD; “Hit or Miss,”

SB

, March 1937.

23

Grog: “Like Mike and Ike,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, n.d.; Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998; Wad Studley, telephone interview, February 6, 1999; Keith Stucki, telephone interview, March 25, 1998.

24

reporter sneaks to track cook’s house: “Turf King,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, n.d.

25

“bring the old Biscuit out …”: Bill Buck, telephone interview, January 28, 1998.

26

artist painting Grog: Keith Stucki, telephone interview, March 25, 1998.

27

Stucki and Whitey fool horseman: Keith Stucki, telephone interview, March 25, 1998.

28

Seabiscuit was insured for $100,000: “Santa Anita Horses Worth Millions,”

SB

, October 1937.

29

Bay Meadows Handicap, “Who finished second …”: “Grand Manitou Runs Second,”

San Francisco Examiner

, April 17, 1937,

FD

.

30

Smith wants to hide horse from eastern handicappers: “Seabiscuit Must Carry Weight,”

San Francisco Examiner

, May 19, 1937, p. 27.

31

Pollard collapses: “Biscuit Iron Horse,”

Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express

, May 1937.

32

Pollard hits Otis: Farrell Jones, telephone interview, November 4, 1998.

CHAPTER 10

1

“One end bites …”: Dorothy Ours, e-mail interview, September 14, 2000; John Clark,

Trader Clark: Six Decades of Racing Lore

(Lexington: Thoroughbred Publications, Inc., 1991).

2

War Admiral compared to sire: “Admiral Likely Wilson Choice,”

SB

, n.d.

3

Stucki rides past Fitzsimmons barn: Keith Stucki, telephone interview, February 11, 1999.

4

“A single steed …”: “Turf King,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, n.d.

5

“Hail the conquerin’ hero …”: “Seabiscuit Wins Massachusetts Handicap,”

Boston Herald

, August 8, 1937, p. 24.

6

“Let’s have some applause …”: “The Post Parade,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form

, September 2, 1937,

FD

.

7

Los Angeles Daily News

poll: “Biscuit Leads by a Nose,”

Los Angeles Daily News

, August 27, 1937.

8

Bing’s telegram: Bing Crosby, telegram to Charles Howard, August 7, 1937.

9

Seabiscuit in mud: “The Inside Track,”

Los Angeles Evening Herald and Express, SB

, n.d; “The Post Parade,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Raing Form

, October 11, 1938; “Seabiscuit,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, July 19, 1938, p. 1H; Beckwith,

Seabiscuit

, p. 41.

10

“Bring on Your War Admiral!”: “The Judge’s Stand,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form

, October 16, 1937,

FD

.

11

asked about training: “Smith Training System,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, November 1937.

12

Fitzsimmons asks to hold Seabiscuit: Ibid.; “Seabiscuit,”

San Francisco Chronicle, July

19, 1938, p. 1H.

13

Howard mocked for being afraid of War Admiral: “Belmont Board of Directors Meet Today,”

San Francisco Call-Bulletin, SB

, April 1938.

14

Vanderbilt: David Schmitz, “A Presence Well Known” online article (Lexington:

Blood-Horse;

accessed November 13, 1999);

www.blood-horse.com/features/vanderbilt1115.html

.

15

“I believe Seabiscuit can beat War Admiral …”: “Turf in Review,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form

, November 3, 1937,

FD

.

16

tongs: “The Judge’s Stand,”

Morning Telegraph/Daily Racing Form, SB

, n.d.

17

He is befuddled:

“War Admiral Race Causes Comment,”

San Francisco Examiner, SB

, n.d.

18

“Seabiscuit will lick him sure …”: “Seabiscuit Will Beat War Admiral,”

San Francisco Call-Bulletin

, November 23, 1937.

19

Crusader incident: “Milton Asks New Starter,”

SB

, October 6, 1938.

20

Howard kept his horses in town: “Seabiscuit to Stay …”:

Baltimore Evening Sun

, November 3, 1937.

21

telephones Otis: “Seabiscuit Rides Home,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, November 18, 1937.

22

Awaiting War Admiral: “Seabiscuit to Stay,”

Baltimore Evening

Sun, November 3, 1937.

23

homecoming: “Royal Welcome for Seabiscuit,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, November 1937; “Seabiscuit Set to Race,”

Oakland Tribune

, November 22, 1937; “Home Town Fans Greet Seabiscuit,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, November 22, 1937, p. 6H; “Even Europe Knows,”

San Francisco Chronicle

, November 22, 1937.

CHAPTER 11

1

Exhibit: “Seabiscuit Voted Standout Horse,”

San Francisco Examiner

, December 10, 1937; “Seabiscuit’s Jockey Gets Suspension,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, December 1937; “Looking ’Em Over,”

San Francisco News, SB

, December 1937; “Owner Refuses Entry,”

Los Angeles Examiner

, December 22, 1937, FD.

2

Horse of the Year: “Seabiscuit Voted Standout Horse,”

San Francisco Examiner

, December 10, 1937.

3

fog workout: “Clockers See Seabiscuit in New Workout,”

SB

, n.d.

4

Monday workout: “Howard Horse Has Three Quarter Run in 1:12,”

Los Angeles Examiner

, February 1, 1938.

5

dipping Seabiscuit’s hoof in ink: “Can Seabiscuit Cop?”

San Francisco Call-Bulletin

, 22, 1937.

6

minimum imposts in California: “Seabiscuit Weight Still in Question,”

San Francisco Chronicle, SB

, late March 1938.

7

lameness rumors: “Seabiscuit Sound?”

San Francisco Examiner, SB

, February 1938.