realized that the horse must have kicked himself while galloping that morning. Because the skin had not been nicked and the heat had been slow to settle in, Smith had missed it. He could not race this horse.
But the trainer was too late. The deadline for scratches had passed five minutes before. Already the other horses, War Admiral included, were trickling to the paddock. Smith would have to appeal to the stewards for special permission to withdraw his horse. Clutching a scratch form, he left Seabiscuit in his stall and ran for the stewards’ stand.
He had to cut through the crowd to reach it, and the throng was packed in and tamped down. Minutes slipped by as Smith waded through the mass of spectators. Finally, he made it to the ladder that led to the stewards’ stand, suspended from the grandstand roof. He cleared the ladder and burst into the room. Seabiscuit, he announced, was injured and could not run. The stewards stared at him, incredulous.
No one moved. Smith realized that they didn’t believe him.
Smith’s high jinks with the press and Seabiscuit’s recent history of scratches had come back to haunt him. The stewards had probably heard rumors that Seabiscuit had not really been lame at Belmont, and they were determined not to be duped. Every one of them believed that Smith had simply decided to duck War Admiral and was using injury as an excuse.
Chief steward Tom Thorpe demanded that Smith run his horse. Smith refused. They traded charges and countercharges. A crowd of reporters gathered outside the room, looking in the windows. They could see Smith and the stewards making angry gestures at each other, but they couldn’t make out the words. Finally, Smith walked around the room, holding the scratch form straight out in front of him, offering it to each steward in turn. Each one glared back at him and refused to take it. Furious, Smith shredded up the form and stormed out. No one, he snapped, was going to force him to race an injured horse.
The stewards sat there and mulled over what to do. Outside, the crowd sensed that something was up. Every horse but Seabiscuit was in the paddock. A few people began to boo.
Howard was brought in. The stewards wanted him to overrule his trainer. Howard knew that another scratching would bring down an avalanche of criticism, but he would not second-guess Smith. He proposed a compromise. Bring in the track veterinarians to decide. The stewards agreed. If two track vets could confirm that the horse was really injured, Smith could scratch him. Otherwise, the horse had to run. With that, everyone dashed off to find two veterinarians. Post time was now a few minutes away. After a frantic hunt, two veterinarians were finally located and taken to the stall. They went over the horse and delivered their verdict.
Smith was right. A tendon running up the back of Seabiscuit’s left foreleg was strained. The horse, the veterinarians said, would probably never run again. The stewards backed down, but they were livid. In the jockeys’ room, Woolf unbuttoned his silks and took them off.
Seabiscuit’s number went dark on the tote board.10 The crowd began to boo. On national radio, commentators declared that Seabiscuit’s career was over. At the track, the announcer’s voice called out over the sea of heads, explaining Seabiscuit’s condition. With his first few words, the boos grew in intensity. The crowd was determined to drown out the poor announcer, who became progressively more frustrated. By the end of his message he was screaming into the mike, concluding in an angry bellow,
Howard listened to the hooting and was horrified. He rushed to the press box to administer some image control but met a hostile audience. Chief steward Thorpe came in at the same time, venting his rage. “No one coaxed Howard to put his horse in the race because we figured something like this would happen,” he sniped. “I think it was poor sportsmanship.”
The crowd was howling epithets, the stewards were infuriated, the reporters were unsympathetic. For once, no amount of Howard charm could help. He reeled back to his box and sat down to a chorus of catcalls. Gradually, the din died off. Howard was deeply embarrassed, but did not regret what he’d done. “If I had raced him that day,” he remembered later, “I would have broken him down for good. I would have been a fool to do that, no matter what was said of me. The old boy had taken enough punishment in his lifetime without me piling any more on.”
On the track, the race was about to go. War Admiral crashed through the gate several times before settling down to break with the field. His black and yellow silks bobbed along with the pack, then fell back. Somewhere in the race he stepped in a dip in the ground, nearly fell face-first to the track, and emerged with a cut hoof. He labored home far behind the winner, Menow, diving for a photo finish for third place. He returned bleeding, only to have the judges deem that he had lost the photo for third. It was the first time he had ever finished out of the money. Riddle stood up and left. Howard felt a pang of pity for him and his horse. “It seems things are all going wrong, what with Red in the hospital and the Biscuit hurt,” he said.11 “But then, Sam Riddle probably feels worse than we do right now.”
The crowd was sagging. The race caller, collecting himself and trying to salvage something out of the ruined afternoon, cheerily announced that the winning jockey, Nick Wall of Stagehand fame, was “an East Boston boy!” There was no response.
“If anyone proposes another match race between these two super horses,” wrote a reporter after the race, “henceforth, he will be tried in the morning for treason, mutiny, mopery and
After the race, the New England Turf Writers Association held its annual dinner. Their evening program reflected the general view of the Seabiscuit crew. On the program cover was a handsome shot of War Admiral. Seabiscuit’s photo was put on the back.
The next morning Smith packed Seabiscuit’s leg in poultices, bundled him up with the rest of the Howard horses, and got the hell out of Boston.
(© BETTMANN/CORBIS)
I KNOW MY HORSE
Seabiscuit’s train chattered west. They were bound for Arlington Park, just outside Chicago, in hopes that they would find some peace there. They didn’t.
When the doors of the railcar slid open and Seabiscuit’s head poked out, Smith was down on the platform waiting for him, standing in a sea of hostile reporters. Unraced for two and a half months, the horse was supercharged. He swung his head around edgily, his ears wagging from under his protective shipping helmet. Smith called out, “Hey there, boy, take it easy,” and Seabiscuit caught sight of him, picking out his rigid form in the crush
