though fast, was thick. The field was formidable, featuring Seabiscuit’s old rivals Aneroid and Indian Broom, plus Today, with Woolf up. Seabiscuit was carrying 130 pounds, 12 more than second-high weight Aneroid and as much as 20 more than other horses in the field. The man on his back was a stranger, unfamiliar with his quirks, with only a few hours of preparation and conflicting advice on how to ride him. It was a formula for disaster.
As Seabiscuit cantered to the post for the San Antonio, Pollard lay on his hospital cot at St. Luke’s. He was in severe pain. Nurses had stacked sandbags all along his left side to prevent him from turning over on his broken chest. His left arm was in traction, a pulley slung to his wrist. His right, pinching a cigarette, was stretched out for the knob on a radio, which the nurses had perched on a stack of magazines. He fiddled with the tuning knob, trying to find the station that would air the race. Turf writer Sid Ziff, from the
Miles away, Seabiscuit was coming unwound. Workman couldn’t get him settled down. The horse reverted to his rebellious habits in the starting gate, bulling forward and raising a fuss. He reared, flung the starter aside, and broke through the front of the gate. They loaded him again, but Workman couldn’t quiet him. The frustrated assistant starter began waving a rope back and forth in front of the horse’s face to distract him. Just before the bell rang, Seabiscuit lunged. The assistant starter caught him and shoved him backward at the same instant that the field sprang away. Seabiscuit came out late, only to be bumped by a straggling horse to his outside. By the time he recovered, he was in seventh, four lengths behind Aneroid and Indian Broom.
Pollard jerked partially upright, his hair mussed from the pillow. “Biscuit!” he shouted. “Get going, Biscuit!” He wiggled closer to the radio. Word came that Seabiscuit was inching forward, and he relaxed a little.
Workman held Seabiscuit back, around the first turn and down the long backstretch. On the far turn, he began sweeping around the field. As Seabiscuit pulled into the stretch, only Indian Broom and Aneroid remained to be caught. “Here comes Seabiscuit!” shouted McCarthy, and the crowd noise echoed into Pollard’s hospital room. “Go get those bums, Seabiscuit!” Pollard sang out. “Get ’em, you old devil!”
In the stands, Smith was focusing on Workman’s hands.22 The jockey was not cocking his whip. He thought he didn’t need to. Seabiscuit was picking off horses and running freely beneath him. In midstretch he collared Indian Broom, then took aim at Aneroid, who was alone on the lead but weakening. They clipped past the seventy-yard pole. Seabiscuit was lopping a foot off of Aneroid’s lead with every stride, but room was running out. Workman thought he would get there. Smith felt the anger rising in him. He could see that the horse was fooling around, playing with Aneroid. Workman didn’t seem to notice. He just
“Aneroid is leading, still leading,” chanted McCarthy. Pollard rose up as if in the saddle, yanking at the pulley holding his arm. The sheets slid from his body and the sandbags tumbled free as he bent before the radio. “Go get him, Biscuit!” he pleaded. “You broke his heart once. Break it again.” He crouched over the bed, as if moving over his horse. His forehead was puckered in sweat.
Smith was livid. The whip was sitting there in Workman’s hand. Seabiscuit’s ears were flicking around; the horse seemed to be waiting for the signal to go for the kill. It never came. Aneroid was driving with everything he had, and Seabiscuit was just jogging with him, a cat batting a stunned mouse. He was having a fine time. His head was still behind. He edged up a little as the wire came, but he was too late. Aneroid won by a short neck.
Pollard wilted into his pillows, drenched in sweat. “It isn’t right,” he said.
A nurse rushed in and began hoisting the sandbags back on the bed. “Who finished second?” she asked.
“Biscuit did.”
“I told you you should have been on him,” she replied.
“Maybe,” said Pollard. “Only Workman gave him a good ride.… It wasn’t his fault.”
A moment later Pollard was tense again. “By God, maybe there is some way I can get this shoulder fixed up for next Saturday. [Do] you think so? If only I could. I can try.” He smiled. “That’s talking like a child, isn’t it?” he said.
The nurse left. Pollard’s shoulder began to throb. He realized that he had wrenched it during the race. He reached for a black cord pinned to his sheet and buzzed the nurse’s station. When the nurse returned, he pleaded with her to sneak him a beer. “Just one, nursie,” he said. “I sure desire one. I just went through hell.”
Pollard had always been, like virtually everyone else at the track, a social drinker, imbibing just enough to be happy and noisy on weekend outings with other jockeys but not enough to become dependent. But analgesia was in its infancy in the 1930s. Pollard’s injuries, involving fragmented bones that ground together each time he moved, were agonizing, and medicine offered few practical solutions. He must have been suffering just as much emotionally. For the first time since he was fifteen, Pollard was deprived of the intoxicating rush of riding.
Alcohol brought relief. Pollard began drinking more regularly and heavily. He was on the road to alcoholism.
At Santa Anita the press came down hard on Workman. He admitted his mistake. Pollard supported him publicly. Howard announced that he was satisfied with Workman and that the jockey would retain the mount for the Santa Anita Handicap.
He spoke too soon. Smith was hopping mad. He couldn’t believe that Workman hadn’t noticed Seabiscuit pricking his ears, an unmistakable sign that a horse is not concentrating. And he was furious that the jockey had disobeyed his instructions. Sitting in his tack room two days after the race, he vented his frustrations. “Workman must have ridden according to other orders. He didn’t obey mine,” he sniped. “Seabiscuit will win the Santa Anita Handicap. He is the best horse. He is fit and he is ready. All I want is a jockey who will obey my orders.”23 Howard, uncomfortable with Smith’s excoriation of Workman, made a point of praising the jockey to reporters. He wanted to stay with Workman, arguing that the rider wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Smith dug in: Workman had to go. Workman went, bitterly complaining that he had ridden the horse exactly as Pollard had told him to.
On February 28 Smith tacked up Seabiscuit and guided him to the track before a Monday crowd. Howard and Alfred Vanderbilt joined them. Vanderbilt was presenting Seabiscuit with the
