Random Book Review

This month: Some great sports writing.

Seabiscuit, An American Legend

I found this book at our library, and thought that it might be interesting because I had heard of the race-horse Seabiscuit, but knew almost nothing about him. This book is about the lives of Charles Howard, a rich car salesman; Red Pollard, a failing jockey; and Tom Smith, a man who had a fantastic talent with horses, but not with people. These three people joined together to train one of the most famous racehorses of the 1930's, Seabiscuit.

Charles Howard made his riches as San Francisco's first Buick salesman. He raced cars, and announced that "The day of the Horse is over." He continued selling cars, but finally got bored with them. He then looked for something else exciting to do, and found horse racing. Howard promptly went out and bought some horses, and then needed a trainer. He somehow found Tom Smith as his trainer, who in turn, found Seabiscuit. Seabiscuit was not really interested in racing at first, even though he was extremely fast. Red Pollard was a failing jockey, and stumbled by Seabiscuit right when the horse needed a jockey that could handle him. Pollard could. He was on, and the circle was complete.

Seabiscuit was a runt of a horse, coming from a poor breeding. His father was Hard Tack, who was the son of Man O' War, who was one of the best and most famous racehorses of all time. His mother was just some mare. Seabiscuit had a brother called Grog that looked exactly like Seabiscuit, and he could not race at all. Seabiscuit's trainer, Tom Smith, hated the press. He would on occasion send Grog for training instead of Seabiscuit, making reporters think Seabiscuit was lame. Then the real Seabiscuit would go win the race the next day, completely puzzling the press.

The rags-to-riches horse soon became a national phenomenon during the Good Old Days of the Great Depression with his winning. He raced, and won, in just about every race in the west, and then moved to the east. Seabiscuit had one goal left: to race, and win, against the other champion horse at that time, War Admiral. Seabiscuit could easily of entered in any one of the races that War Admiral was entered in, but Tom Smith and Charles Howard wanted a one-on-one match. They tried, and failed to set up a match multiple times. Finally, just before War Admiral's retirement, a match was able to take place. Just about everyone in the country was talking about it. My grandmother remembers how it was one of the biggest sporting events of the century. Even the president, FDR, kept a roomful of advisors waiting in the White House so he could hear the race on the radio.

I liked the descriptions in this book, and especially the descriptions of the races. I enjoyed this book a lot, and would recommend this book to people who like horses, sports stories, or well-written books in general. Seabiscuit was an amazing racehorse, and this book reveals the lows and the highs of making one of America's best-known racehorses.

Click here for a previous review or here for the May-June 2002 back issue index.