Seabiscuit!

Book Review:
Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand

Seabiscuit is an outstanding work of literature. It tells the story of a legendary horse who rose from obscurity to a national obsession. It also details the history of horseracing of the 1930’s era. The bulk of the book is the beautifully developed story of the three men, Red Pollard, Charles Howard, and Tom Smith, intimately connected with Seabiscuit. Most important, however, is that Laura Hillenbrand, through telling the story of the legendary horse is capturing and teaching us about the mood and spirit of the Great Depression. To know the Seabiscuit story is to know the soul of America during a critical time in its history.
Laura Hillenbrand describes Red Pollard as “sinking downward through his life with the pendulous motion of a leaf falling through still air”. In the summer of 1936 “he was, statistically speaking, one of the worst riders anywhere”. He had no money and no home. He usually slept in empty stalls.
Pollard started life in Edmonton, Alberta. Hillenbrand describes his Irish immigrant father making a fortune in manufacturing bricks. A flash flood wiped out his factory and left the family bankrupt. At 15 Pollard left his parents and siblings to seek his fortune in riding horses. Utter poverty contributed to his leaving his family, and not knowing where his next meal would be coming from. Hillenbrand goes into well- researched detail of the daily life of a jockey being a struggle for survival. The author relates how Pollard had to hide being blind in one eye from the racing establishment or he would have been banned from riding.
Charles Howard, Seabiscuit’s owner, was certainly not financially ruined by the Depression. Hillenbrand’s following the thread of his life that leads to Seabiscuit is an “American story”. The author describes Howard as “eastern born and bred”. He enlisted in the cavalry during the Spanish American War. He worked as a bike mechanic, got married, and had two sons. With literally 21 cents in his pocket he took the transcontinental train to San Francisco. Howard saw the market for automobiles early and raced them as a way to help marketing. In 1906, the Howard family survived the devastating California earthquake. After the Quake the automobile industry boomed and Howard made a fortune.
Tragedy struck when Charles Howard’s 15 year-old son was in a fatal car accident. Not long afterwards his marriage fell apart. Money didn’t matter. Howard’s life was falling apart, and he was ripe for the Seabiscuit experience.
Laura Hillenbrand’s third thread was Seabiscuit’s trainer Tom Smith. The author refers to him as the “Lone Plainsman”. Smith “had grown up in a world in which horsemanship was as essential as breathing”. Hillenbrand brilliantly relates how he was part of a frontier world that was being “swept away by modernity”. Smith found it harder and harder to find work as the country was in the depths of depression. By chance, his work in healing a sick horse was witnessed by Charles Howard near a racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico.
Having traced for us the lives of Red Pollard, Charles Howard, and Tom Smith the author effectively parallels their story to the world around them. They needed to feel good about something. Hillenbrand poignantly describes, “In the winter of 1937, America was in the seventh year of the most catastrophic decade in history. The economy had come crashing down and millions upon millions of people had been torn loose from their jobs, their savings, and their homes. A notion that drew its audacity from the quintessentially American belief that success is open to anyone willing to work… was disillusioned…The most brash of peoples was seized by despair, fatalism, and fear”.
Hillenbrand describes the new social force of escapism. Local movie theaters across the US hosted 85 million people a week. Radios and popular radio shows were booming. Part of this escapism was an explosive growth in spectator sports and the fastest growing sport was thoroughbred racing. The author points out that sports were growing simultaneously with the technology to bring it to everyone’s living room by radio.
Seabiscuit was found in the barn of one of the country’s top trainers. Following the typical depression theme, the trainer was about to give up on him. He raced poorly. The grooms were afraid of him. Seabiscuit was short, had funny knees, was underweight, and all bruised up. The truth was, as the author sensitively notes, he was not understood as an “individual”. Charles Howard and Tom Smith saw something in the look of his eyes and bought him. The brilliant trainer, as Hillenbrand relates, studied him and helped him learn his inborn love of racing. The author teaches us that Seabiscuit thrived on competition. He typically did not lead races, but would make spectacular finishes. As he began to win races, the press and the public could not get enough of him. Despite his “runtiness” he ws breaking speed records all over the West Coast.
The drama of the Seabiscuit saga was added to by the ups and downs of injuries to himself and Red Pollard. Red Pollard had two near death accidents. In the second accident the jockey nearly lost his leg and spent months recovering. The physicians taking care of him told the owner, Charles Howard, that he should never race again. Howard disagreed. He told the doctor in a statement that allows Hillenbrand to capture the mood of the era, that he would rather see Red Pollard lose his leg than his hope.
A climax of the Hillenbrand book is the ultimate match race between Sea Biscuit and War Admiral. War Admiral and his owner, Samuel Riddle, epitomized the smugness of “old money” and the eastern racing establishment. Seabiscuit epitomized “the little guy”. War Admiral was tall and elegant. He had won all the major races in the East. His owner discounted Seabiscuit as an unimportant horse. Riddle avoided taking on the Seabiscuit challenge. Finally the public and the press pressured War Admiral’s owner enough to force what is viewed as one of the great sports events of all time. As Hillenbrand emphasizes, riding with Seabiscuit, and the ups and downs of his career was the spirit and hopes of all the downtrodden. Seabiscuit, as usual, had the character to rise to the occasion.
Laura Hillenbrand’s book is an important work of literature. Her research on horse racing and the lives surrounding Seabiscuit is well detailed. Her writing style makes it an easy read. Most important in the Seabiscuit story, is her ability to capture the emotional intensity of the time. A time, as she points out, that the country’s mood was at an all time low and the spirit of Seabiscuit was desperately needed. The fact that each critical component of the Seabiscuit story seemed to come from nowhere only adds to the drama and effect. Seabiscuit was a small, runty horse that was losing races and being mishandled. Red Pollard had been abandoned as a boy, failing as a jockey, and sleeping in stall floors. Tom Smith was part of a vanishing frontier. Charles Howard had moved west to go into the bike business with 21 cents in his pocket. They joined forces, supported each other, and thrived. As Laura Hillenbrand insightfully teaches us, their success would help invigorate the soul of a country that was at a desperate time in its history.