Seabiscuit: An American Legend

by Laura Hillenbrand

  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.

  (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.

  Howard began to see the merits of the race. For one, a sizable purse could get Seabiscuit that much closer to Sun Beau’s money-winning mark; he was still $85,000 short. In addition, Smith might enjoy pitting his horse against one trained by his son, Jimmy, just as Howard would enjoy facing off against Lin. And Lin wouldn’t let up on the needling. Howard gave in.

  Lin wanted to make it interesting. He dared his father to make a side bet with him.3 Howard shook him off. He told him he couldn’t bear to take any more money from his own son.

  Crosby hustled off to make the arrangements. He returned with a fair deal. Del Mar would put up a winner-take-all purse of $25,000, 14 percent of the entire purse budget for the track’s meeting. Seabiscuit would carry 130 pounds, Ligaroti 115. The race, slated for August 12, would be run over a mile and an eighth. Woolf would ride Seabiscuit, Spec Richardson would ride Ligaroti. Charles and Lin flipped a coin to determine post position. Charles won the toss and picked the rail.

  At Del Mar the reporters followed Smith everywhere, but all they got out of him was a gusty “Ugh!”4 Unable to catch Seabiscuit working, the newsmen took a page from the Wise We Boys and staked out tactical positions around the track. Smith somehow evaded them. Someone wondered aloud if Seabiscuit was working “camouflaged as a diesel tractor.”5 In the afternoon, racegoers streamed past Seabiscuit’s stall. “It looked like a parade,” Smith growled. When the races were on, Seabiscuit could see the fields go down the backstretch and would try to climb out of his stall to run with them. Smith had had enough and secreted the horse away to a new stall. The press couldn’t find it.

  In the week before the race, Howard took an unusual phone call. The caller was a track official, who told him that a New York bettor had sent $5,000 to wager on Ligaroti, challenging Howard to put up $15,000
against it. Howard was surely amazed at such a huge wager from a complete stranger, but he was not one to back down from a challenge. It took him a while to learn that he had been suckered. The mysterious “New York bettor” was in fact Lin, who had talked the track official into placing the call.

  Meanwhile, Lin and Crosby were hard at work putting on a horse race Hollywood-style.6 Crosby arranged to have a large section of the clubhouse roped off and patrolled by guards, with admission restricted to Ligaroti rooters—the “I’m for Ligaroti” section. He went out on a promotional tour to gather a cast of thousands, contacting four hundred friends, mostly movie people, and talking them into coming to the track to cheer his horse on. He appointed Dave Butler, director of Shirley Temple films, head cheerleader, fitting him with a turtleneck emblazoned with the initials BL, for Binglin. He had four hundred Ligaroti pennants printed up in the horse’s colors, cerise and white polka dots, and attached to canes for waving. Turf scribe Jack McDonald surveyed the production and wondered if the net effect would be to inspire Ligaroti or scare him to death.7

  Crosby flooded the region with publicity. All over town, posters went up that read:

  DEL MAR

  AUGUST 12, 1938

  SEABISCUIT VS. LIGAROTI

  ———

  CHARLES HOWARD

  VS. BING CROSBY

  FATHER VS. SON

  THE ICEMAN WOOLF

  VS. SPEC RICHARDSON

  AMERICA VS. ARGENTINA

  ———

  ONE OF THE

  GREATEST MATCH RACES

  OF ALL TIME

  From the race’s conception, the press viewed it with skepticism. Sportswriters argued that the rich event was a farce arranged to pad Seabiscuit’s bankroll. Del Mar, conscious of the potential conflict of interest for the Howards and Smiths, barred public wagering on the race. But the press’s distrust and the absence of gambling did nothing to cool the enthusiasm of racing fans. On the sweltering race day, special trains and buses poured in from San Diego and Los Angeles, filling the track with well over twenty thousand people, many more than the track’s official capacity. Lin plastered a twenty-foot LIGAROTI sign on the wall behind the “I’m for Ligaroti” section, and scores of Crosby’s movie friends, including Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, Spencer Tracy and Ray Milland, took up their cerise and white pennants and filed in. “Is there anyone left in Hollywood?” wondered a spectator. Dave Butler led a chorus of Ligaroti cheers, and the crowd grew boisterous.

  Crosby perched on the roof with Oscar Otis, who would call the race for a national radio broadcast. In the jockeys’ room, Woolf suited up to man the helm on Seabiscuit while Richardson slipped on Ligaroti’s polka dots. Just before the race, Woolf and Richardson made a deal. No matter who won, they would “save,” or split, the purse between them.

  ———

  It began as an exhilarating display of pure speed. To a gleeful shriek from the crowd, Seabiscuit and Ligaroti ripped out of the gate side by side. There was no clever strategy in either camp; each rider wanted the lead immediately. It was Seabiscuit who got it, tearing toward the first turn with his head in front. He couldn’t shake Ligaroti off. They rounded the first turn and barreled into the backstretch locked together. Inch by inch, Ligaroti edged closer, then thrust his nose in front. A few strides later, Seabiscuit edged back to the lead again. After six furlongs, they were one-fifth of a second below the track record. The mile marker clipped by, and the tote board flashed the fraction: 1:36⅕. They had run two seconds faster than the track record.

  They couldn’t, it seemed, keep up such a pace. With the crowd leaping and yelling, the two horses skimmed the far turn and straightened away for the run for the wire. Richardson was playing every card he had, hollering in Woolf’s ear to try to distract him or provoke him into fouling himself out of the race.

  With an eighth of a mile to go, Richardson felt Ligaroti beginning to weaken. The colt sagged inward, muscling his shoulder and hip into the smaller Seabiscuit. Hemmed in between Ligaroti and the rail, Seabiscuit had nowhere to go. He was driven to the left and for an awful moment nearly tumbled over the rail. He straightened himself out, grimly stood his ground, and held his head in front. Richardson kept right on yelling.

  Seabiscuit had Ligaroti beaten. Richardson knew it. Desperate, the jockey resorted to an old bush-league tactic. Reaching across the gap between the two horses, he grabbed Seabiscuit’s saddlecloth and pulled back hard. Woolf couldn’t believe it. “What are you doing, Spec?” he shouted.8 Richardson didn’t let go.

  Seabiscuit was now towing Ligaroti down the homestretch. Woolf couldn’t break him free. Anchored by Richardson’s grasp, Ligaroti began to haul himself forward. The two horses drew together again, running stride for stride with Seabiscuit’s head still in front. On their backs, Woolf and Richardson struggled. With seventy yards to go, Richardson abruptly released the saddlecloth and grabbed Woolf’s whip hand. Woolf twisted around in the saddle, trying to snatch his wrist free. It was here, Richardson later said, that he locked his leg over Woolf’s leg. If Seabiscuit moved up, Woolf would be scraped off his saddle and slammed into the track. The Howards’ sporting gesture had disintegrated into a back-alley brawl.9

  With just a few yards to go, Woolf was frantic. Seabiscuit was fighting hard, but in Richardson’s grasp, he could not break away. The wire was looming overhead, and Ligaroti was lunging for the lead. Races in that day were not yet filmed with head-on and side-shot patrol cameras to police for riding infractions, so there was a good chance that Ligaroti would not be disqualified if his nose hit the wire first. Woolf could not move Seabiscuit up. He had to move Ligaroti back.

  With twenty yards to go, Woolf tore his hand free, threw out his right arm and grabbed Ligaroti’s bridle, just above the bit. Just as the wire passed overhead, he pulled back, lifting the horse’s head up and to the left as Seabiscuit’s head bobbed forward. Seabiscuit flew under the wire first. Lugging 130 pounds, Ligaroti, and Richardson, Seabiscuit had run nine furlongs in 1:49. He had broken the track record by four seconds, the equivalent of some twenty-five lengths.

  Up on the clubhouse, Oscar Otis looked quizzically at the finish line. He had seen Ligaroti’s head jerk up oddly at the wire. A jubilant celebration was going on all around him; almost no one else had noticed anything amiss. The reporters were raving. One called it “the dingbustingest contest you ever clapped an eye on … a ripsnorting race.”10 But the stewards, standing on an infield platform right above the finish line, had seen everything. The INQUIRY sign blipped up on the board.

  Richardson galloped back first, jumped off the horse, bounded up the stairs three at a time, and muddied up the stewards’ stand carpets. Shouting passionately and waving his arms as he spoke, Richardson charged that Woolf had fouled him. The stewards called Woolf in. With his usual frankness, the Iceman admitted everything he had done but explained why he had done it. The stewards sent the jockeys outside while they conferred. The crowd buzzed in confusion.

  Woolf and Richardson waited side by side on the track, Woolf with his hands on his hips, Richardson with his arms folded on the rail. Each one peered angrily out of the corner of his eye at the other, and neither said a word. Woolf was sure that Richardson was about to smack him.

  The ruling came down. The foul was not allowed, and the result was allowed to stand. The baffled reporters asked the stewards why they had held an inquiry at all, but the stewards refused to explain themselves.

  Clearly, something was up: Woolf and Richardson were told not to accept any more mounts pending a meeting by the stewards.

  The riders stomped to the jockeys’ room, snapping at each other. The newsmen, in agonies of curiosity, tailed them. They overheard Richardson accusing Woolf of grabbing his bridle, and Woolf retorting that Richardson had grabbed his whip. Woolf said if Richardson had just stopped shouting for one single instant to concentrate on riding, he might have gotten his horse’s nose in front.11, 12

  Down in the winner’s circle, Crosby
could smell disaster. Standing with Marcela, he waited, sober-faced and distracted, as his wife—universally known as “Mrs. Bing”—gamely presented the winner’s trophy to Charles. Lin and his father, laughing, shook hands. With the ceremony over, Crosby rushed after Woolf and Richardson. He found them on the verge of blows in the jockeys’ room, with all the reporters watching. Desperate to avoid bad publicity, Crosby stepped between them and told them to hold their tongues. Marcela, more excited than she had ever been over a race, downed several aspirin.13

  The next morning the stewards called Woolf and Richardson in and threw the book at them. Not only were both suspended for the rest of the meeting, but the officials recommended that the state racing board ban them from all California tracks until January 1, 1939. It was a punishment tough enough to demand explanation, but the stewards still refused to reveal what had happened. In their zeal to avoid resurrecting the sport’s reputation for chicanery, they tried to bury the incident. Asked to release official photos, they declined. “I want the newspapers to forget this thing,” said the presiding steward.14 “Consequently, I have no further information to give.”

  A more suggestive comment could hardly have been made. The press covering the race was already suspicious and scandal-hungry, and assumed that the stewards were hiding something shocking. Wild speculation was the order of the day. Someone was bound to make a public accusation of wrongdoing.15 Someone did.

  It began four days after the race, with a San Diego Sun story trumpeted in an enormous front-page banner headline in two-inch-high letters: “INSIDE” ON BISCUIT RACE BARED. Anonymously written, the story charged that Woolf admitted he had been told not to win by too much, to “make it look close” and “make a race of it.16” Richardson, the story alleged, knew that Seabiscuit was being held back and tried to take advantage of it to steal the race so he could cash in on a $1,500 bet on Ligaroti. Woolf then had to resort to dirty riding to thwart Richardson. The article speculated that the stewards’ “secret investigation” may have revealed “the identity of the race figure who gave Woolf his orders,” but that the officials were not telling the public.