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.
(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
