Seabiscuit: An American Legend

A tentative cheer rose out of the crowd. Seabiscuit was only making up ground in inches, and he was still at least eight lengths behind. Time was running out.

Leaning around the far turn, Woolf drew a bead on Specify again. Incredibly, the horse was still rolling. A pang of fear went through Woolf. Ligaroti was somewhere behind him; bumped and pinched hard on the backstretch, he had been knocked too far back, and would finish a fast-closing fourth. Woolf knew he could easily beat the others, but he was beginning to worry that he couldn’t catch Specify. Dropping flat in the saddle, he gave his mount two taps with the whip and clucked in his ear. Up in the booth, caller Joe Hernandez saw him do it, and shouted into the microphone. “And here comes Seabiscuit!”

For a moment Seabiscuit faltered, the ground breaking up under his hooves. But all at once, his turn speed emerged. He bent his body to the arc of the rail and punched into the belly of the field. At the top of the stretch, he shot out of the front of the pack. Specify came into view, still leading by four lengths. Whichcee was on his outside. Woolf looked back for Ligaroti just as his mount caught sight of Specify. Seabiscuit’s ears flipped back and flattened. Woolf didn’t need to tell his horse what to do. Seabiscuit lunged forward, cutting inside of Whichcee and gunning for Specify.

Woolf felt like he was flying. He put his whip away. “There was nothing to do,” he said later, “but give him his way.” Specify’s hindquarters neared, and Woolf pulled back a tick on his left rein to give Seabiscuit clear sailing. Seabiscuit swept up to Specify and finished him. He accelerated away and cruised under the wire all alone, breaking the track record.

As four pageboys struggled to haul the four-foot-high solid-gold trophy to Howard in the winner’s circle, Woolf was wreathed in flowers. “I thought it would be easy,” he said. “It was.” Howard laughed and smiled and stroked Seabiscuit’s nose. The awards presenter, the comely actress Anita Louise, handed Smith his trophy. The trainer’s uncharacteristically bashful response became the subject of a banner headline: SILENT TOM SMILES!⁹

Someone told Smith about Bert Baroni’s $5,000 bet that the supposedly lame Seabiscuit would lose to Specify. Smith laughed so hard, said a witness, “I thought he’d bust.”¹

Seabiscuit, sound, brilliantly fast, and impeccably prepared, had spoken on Smith’s behalf. The reporters had been wrong, and they knew it. Up in the press box, they stayed late to bang out praises and apologies. Down on the track, the cheering went on and on.

After the last race of the day was run and the track had cleared, darkness gathered under the shed rows of the Hollywood backstretch. Virtually everyone was gone but Smith, standing alone with Seabiscuit.

“The clockers told me the horse wasn’t right,” a passerby heard the old trainer say, “and the handicappers said he wasn’t in condition.

“But I know my horse.”¹⁰

———

In one of the wildest and most controversial horse races ever run, Seabiscuit (A) and Ligaroti barrel down the Del Mar homestretch as Spec Richardson, on Ligaroti, repeatedly fouls George Woolf, on Seabiscuit

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(SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE)

1 For Baroni, losing to Seabiscuit must have been particularly galling. In 1935, when Seabiscuit was two and floundering in low-dollar claiming races, Baroni had contemplated purchasing him for a yard sale price, but shied away from those ugly forelegs. Baroni’s luck wasn’t all bad; the horse he decided to buy instead, the $3,500 claimer Top Row, won the hundred-grander in 1936 and amassed total career earnings of more than $200,000.

Chapter 17

THE DINGBUSTINGEST CONTEST YOU EVER CLAPPED AN EYE ON

Lin Howard was in one of those moods during which crazy ideas sound perfectly sensible. A bullish, handsome man with decisive eyebrows and more hair than he could find use for, Lin had a great deal of money and a habit of having things go his way. So many things in his life had gone his way that it no longer occurred to him not to be in a festive mood, and he spent much of his time celebrating the general goodness of things and sitting with old friends telling fat happy lies. But things had not gone Lin’s way lately, and he was not accustomed to the feeling.

Lin wanted in the worst way to whip his father at racing, to knock his Seabiscuit down a peg or two, and he believed he had the horse to do it in Ligaroti.¹ He was sure enough about it to have made some account-closing bets on the horse, at least one as a side wager with his father, and he was a great deal poorer for it. The last race really ate at him. Ligaroti had been at Seabiscuit’s throat in the Hollywood Gold Cup when another horse had bumped him right out of his game. He had streaked down the stretch to finish fourth and had come back a week later to score a smashing victory over Whichcee in a Hollywood stakes race, firmly establishing himself as the second-best horse in the West. Bing Crosby and Lin were certain that with a weight break and a clean trip, Ligaroti had Seabiscuit’s measure. Charles Howard didn’t see it that way. Since the race, he had been going around with pockets full of clippings about Seabiscuit. Anytime anyone came near him, he would wave the articles around and start gushing, like a new father. The senior Howard probably didn’t hold back when Lin was around. He was immensely proud of Lin’s success with Ligaroti, but he enjoyed tweaking his son, and he was good at it. He had once given Lin a book for Christmas entitled What You Know About Horses. The pages were blank.

One night shortly after the Hollywood Gold Cup, Lin was sitting at a restaurant table across from his father and Bing Crosby. They were apparently talking about the Gold Cup, and Lin was sitting there looking at his father and doing a slow burn. Bing wasn’t too happy either; his misadventures as a horse owner were becoming an embarrassment. An idea was kicking around in Lin’s head, and it seemed as good a time as any to toss it out there. Why not have a match race between Seabiscuit and Ligaroti?

Charles snorted.

Crosby lit up. The year before, he had invested $600,000 in the building of a new track, Del Mar, a magnificent seaside racing palace near San Diego.² Del Mar was a Bing paradise, featuring good racing by day and dinner, dancing, and crooning by night. But in its second year Del Mar needed a boost; daily attendance averaged just six thousand. A match race featuring Seabiscuit was just what the track needed. Crosby knew he could talk the board of directors into footing a big purse for the event. Crosby and Lin worked on Howard for the rest of the meal.