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
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 1:11?; 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,
