Seabiscuit: An American Legend – Laura Hillenbrand, 2001 ★★★★

Somebody Bet on the Bay

First-time author Laura Hillenbrand put on a master class in popular-history writing with this improbable tale of an ungainly little red racehorse that could.

Luminously written, with deep appreciation for the culture of the racetrack and the colorful personalities that lived and died around it, Seabiscuit is the sort of history book that not only edifies and entertains but asks us to ponder how amazing a thing life can be.

For author and reader, it becomes about more than horseracing:

The racehorse, by virtue of his awesome physical gifts, freed the jockey from himself. When a horse and a jockey flew over the track together, there were moments in which the man’s mind wedded itself to the animal’s body to form something greater than the sum of both parts. The horse partook of the jockey’s cunning; the jockey partook of the horse’s supreme power.

Hillenbrand makes clear early on this an underdog story about more than a horse. On the saddle is John “Red” Pollard, vagabond jockey, “sinking downward through his life with the pendulous motion of a leaf falling through still air.” He knows more about injury than winning. Training him is taciturn, underappreciated Tom Smith, also at loose ends. Owner Charles Howard seeks to fill a hole after the death of his son.

Jockey Pollard atop Seabiscuit. Hillenbrand notes the horse's "baseball-glove" knees caused many trainers to look elsewhere. Image from http://redpollardproject.weebly.com/career.html.

 Add to this the backdrop of the 1930s, with the Great Depression and the grim specter of war in Europe. Sometimes a long shot is just what everyone needs to believe in.

Seabiscuit himself may be a grandson of thoroughbred-racing legend Man O’ War. He just doesn’t look it. “The colt’s body, built low to the ground, had all the properties of a cinderblock,” Hillenbrand writes. He runs with a “spastic flailing motion” of his left foreleg; lack of urgency cost him many races and caused others to give up on him.

“Sixteen times Seabiscuit ran; sixteen times he lost,” Hillenbrand notes about a series of races where the two-year-old was offered for sale. “From Florida to Rhode Island and practically everywhere in between, he was offered in the cheapest claiming races. No one took him.”

But Tom Smith saw something in the horse that stuck with him; once he got Howard’s backing he chose Seabiscuit. Or as Hillenbrand tells it, the Biscuit chose him. And just as Smith and Howard wonder who might ride this new mount of theirs, at that moment, in walks Pollard, fresh from a car wreck, looking for work with a sugar cube in his pocket Seabiscuit was fated to wolf down.

Seabiscuit is led out by trainer Tom Smith. In front of them walks Charles Howard, Seabiscuit's owner. Together with Red Pollard, they form the main quartet in Hillenbrand's book. Image from http://redpollardproject.weebly.com/personal-life.html. 

There are moments like this one in Seabiscuit where the “too-good-to-be-true” alarm rang in my head. Hillenbrand unquestionably pushes the narrative in a feel-good direction, take that as you will.

Hillenbrand justifies this approach for the most part, relying on reporting of the period rather than imaginative reconstruction. I found her writing to be lean yet lyrical, drawing me in without my noticing. She spends minimal time on scene-setting, focusing instead on explaining the intricacies of horse-racing in easy-to-understand ways.

Take her explanation of how Seabiscuit, once managed into his world-beating form, handled himself on the track:

There was a supple geometry to his arc, a fish bending through a current. Where virtually all horses decelerate and often drift out as they try to negotiate corners, Seabiscuit was capable of holding a tight line while accelerating dramatically.

Later, in a climactic match race with Triple-Crown winner War Admiral, the excitement of the contest is built up in understated style:

The poles clipped by, blurring in the riders’ peripheral vision. The speed was impossible; at the mile mark, a fifteen-year-old speed record fell under them, broken by nearly a full second. The track rail hummed up under them and unwound behind.

Author Laura Hillenbrand in 2016 with Michael C. Howard, great-grandson of Seabiscuit's owner Charles Howard. Behind them is a statue of Seabiscuit. Image from https://www.paulickreport.com/horse-care-category/author-laura-hillenbrand-finally-made-pilgrimage-ridgewood-home-seabiscuit/.

Hillenbrand isn’t always so low-key. Many times, the narrative strains for cosmic significance that rings a bit false: “The earth seemed to dip under Seabiscuit’s hoof-falls, pulling the world in toward him and everyone around him.”

Before one big Seabiscuit race, the 1940 Santa Anita Handicap, she claims the National Weather Service was besieged by more calls than any prior time in its history, to find out if the race would go on. Here and elsewhere, we are in John Ford “print-the-legend” territory.

Hillenbrand begins the book with the whopper Seabiscuit was 1938’s biggest newsmaker. Snopes.com later proved this false, but even in the context of this book itself, the claim is clearly absurd. When Seabiscuit beat War Admiral that November, it was a huge upset. How could anyone think Seabiscuit got even as much ink for that whole year as the more revered War Admiral, let alone Roosevelt and Hitler?

Hillenbrand’s fences-swinging approach sure worked at the time, though. Seabiscuit was published to massive popular and critical acclaim, topping the New York Times’ Best Seller List, later spawning an Oscar-nominated movie and one of the hottest DVDs of all time.

Tobey Maguire as Red Pollard in the 2003 hit movie Seabiscuit, based on this book. Image from https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/in-praise-of-older-books-seabiscuit-by-laura-hillenbrand-2001-1.3519140.

Coming out as it did at a transition point in American history, the dawn of a new century with the era-defining tragedy of 9/11 still months away, Seabiscuit resonates with that irrational exuberance which once came so naturally and now feels nostalgically sweet. Its core message of inexhaustible possibility is exhilarating.

The best part of Seabiscuit is the first third, where characters are assembled and stakes set. From the first tentative hints regarding Seabiscuit’s potential, to the sudden explosion of his racing talent under Smith’s tender care, I was sucked in.

Hillenbrand lays out the nerve-grinding dynamics of horseracing:

When a horse is in full stride, the only parts of the jockey that are in continuous contact with the animal are the insides of the feet and ankles – everything else is balanced in midair. In other words, jockeys squat on the pitching backs of their mounts, a task much like perching on the grille of a car while it speeds down a twisting, potholed freeway in traffic.

Near the middle of the book, a near-fatal fall Pollard takes on another horse brings another key character into the story. Unlike Pollard, George Woolf is a financial success as a jockey, able to decline mounts Pollard and most others would beg to ride. He proved the right man to take Seabiscuit to the next level once Pollard’s attentive riding has brought the horse to peak form.

Seabiscuit, ridden by George Woolf, moves ahead of War Admiral at their 1938 match race at Pimlico, Maryland. This story of a great American horse was made possible with the help of two Canadian-born jockeys, Woolf and Pollard. Image from https://www.toledoblade.com/a-e/books/2001/04/15/Two-books-chronicle-glory-days-of-horse-racing/stories/200104150012.

There is much spoon-fed drama regarding the condition of the horse and its riders. Seabiscuit loses a couple of heartbreakers and has a couple of health scares. From Hillenbrand’s elegiac narrative I thought 1937 Seabiscuit’s worst year, then looked at the career chart at the end of the book to see he had his steadiest string of wins that year.

Seabiscuit himself was quite a character. Hillenbrand notes his amiable nature, a menagerie of stable friends, a propensity for mid-race gloating. He had a habit of losing interest until the frontrunners were well ahead. Then he had a target.

With War Admiral in 1938, though, the strategy by Smith and Wolff had to be different. War Admiral was known for blazing fast starts, setting a pace no other horse could match. He was a younger, fleeter-looking animal that had won the Triple Crown the year before. Even their very names suggested a mismatch.

And it was, too; just not in the direction people expected. See for yourself.

Seabiscuit loved photographers. Hillenbrand notes they had a name for him, "Movie Star." Image from https://www.sfchronicle.com/thetake/article/When-Seabiscuit-galloped-into-Northern-California-7680212.php#photo-10051713. 

“Once a horse gives Seabiscuit the old look-in-the-eye, he begins to run to parts unknown,” Hillenbrand quotes Pollard saying at around this time. “He might loaf sometimes when he’s in front and thinks he’s got a race in the bag. But he gets gamer and gamer the tougher it gets.”

That’s kind of my take on Seabiscuit the book. It starts strong, pulls up a bit along the stretch, then suddenly is clopping off again, faster than ever.

A remarkable thing about Seabiscuit is what happened to the horse after it beat War Admiral. Already five years old and well into retirement age, he ruptured a suspensory ligament which seemingly left his racing future a matter for his progeny. But both the horse and Pollard would make another comeback attempt, to win one race which had always eluded the Biscuit, the Santa Anita Handicap.

Seabiscuit with two steady companions, trainer Smith riding the palomino gelding Pumpkin, Seabiscuit's stablemate and travel buddy. Webpage https://www.globetrotting.com.au/pumpkin-seabiscuits-best-friend/ celebrates Pumpkin's role as equine anxiety sponge. 

Hillenbrand sets up her big finish well:

In the midst of all the whirling noise of that supreme moment, Pollard felt peaceful. Seabiscuit reached and pushed and Pollard folded and unfolded over his shoulders and they breathed together. A thought pressed into Pollard’s mind: We are alone.

While I feel Hillenbrand’s book sorely lacks critical remove in places (her principals never seem at fault for anything that can be even tangentially blamed on someone else), the powerful writing and tense narrative make Seabiscuit a winner, even for non-sports or history readers. Pick it up and you may never put it down.