The Best There Ever Was

Mary Jean Wall reviews Sharon B. Smith's new book, The Best There Ever Was, about early 20th century harness racing sensation Dan Patch:

In harness racing, horses trot or pace at speed while urged on by a driver in a single-seat cart called a sulky. Americans in the 19th century identified closely with this sport because most people drove horses as their primary transportation. Few could resist the urge to go fast when another horse and buggy pulled alongside. Harness racing was daily life lived large. People loved Dan Patch because he was fast and also because he started bowing to the grandstands, something he learned on his own. Newspapers called him the "national pet."
Ms. Smith makes the argument that Dan Patch stood for Middle America and its cultural values, accompanying a population shift from the East to the nation's geographical center. Wealthy industrialists of the East favored stylish trotters, a type defined by its gait. Midwesterners admired trotters but quickly grew to prefer pacers (again, defined by their gait), who raced faster than trotters. Dan Patch's game was pacing: Indiana-born and raised, he converted urban, Eastern horse enthusiasts to his style of racing.
All the elements of a good yarn come through in Dan Patch's story. No one would have believed at his birth that he would develop into a fast racehorse, one destined to break records. He was born crooked-legged, unable to stand on his legs and nurse naturally. His breeder-owner, Dan Messner of Oxford, Ind., said that he believed the colt would amount to no more than a delivery-wagon horse—if he lived.
Time and special shoeing to correct Dan Patch's gait turned the pacer into a racing machine. Dan Patch still had knobby knees and traveled with a peculiar motion caused by a misshapen left hind hoof. But this horse loved to race, as Messner and the colt's initial trainer discovered. His 1-minute-55-second mile (later disallowed on a technicality) set a mark not surpassed for more than half a century.

It is interesting that he may have been the first celebrity athletic product endorser.