Man O'War

  It was very easy, he thought. Just as it was easy now to recall everything that had happened.

  The fifteen mares had romped across the winter fields at Hinata with everybody watching them. Six had come from England, the rest from America. Some had never seen a racetrack. All were of the best of bloodlines and of the finest type to make good broodmares. Upon them depended the success of Man o’ War as a sire, and only time would tell what strains combined best with his own. Luck would play an important part in the matings, of course, but skill and knowledge, too, had taken a hand in the careful selection of these mares.

  The new stallion barn had been ready for Man o’ War when he arrived in late January. He was a hundred pounds heavier than when Danny had last seen him. He stood in the cold of that winter day looking every inch the emperor he was. Man o’ War had come home to Kentucky, and Danny was one of those who had lined the long fences at Hinata, calling out his name and waving to him.

  “He must have been bored,” the young woman said, interrupting his reverie, “really bored after all the excitement of the racecourse.” She paused, smiling. “I mean, even with his big harem it must have been pretty dull compared to the clamor and the glamor of the life he had known while racing.”

  Danny Ryan smiled back. “No, I don’t really think he was bored,” he answered. “Red … I mean Man o’ War … had more brains than most horses. He adjusted quickly to the new life set out for him. Of course, he was restive at first, as any fine stallion would be. But soon he took it all in stride.”

  Nothing ever seemed to be hurried in those days, he recalled. Man o’ War had seemed to know he was back in Kentucky. Maybe he even recognized some of the hills and barns and fences of that countryside. He’d been cantered each day, going down the back roads and lanes around Lexington. First Clyde Gordon had ridden him, then John Buckner, Miss Daingerfield’s stud groom. Danny had seen them often on the wintry roads.

  “No,” he said aloud, turning back to the young woman. “They never gave him a chance to be bored that first year. They made everything interesting for him. He never got lazy and fat. He’d run like a colt when they turned him loose in the paddocks, and I think he looked forward to seeing his foals as much as anyone else.”

  “Did you see them, the first foals, I mean?” she asked.

  “I saw them,” he answered.

  In the very first crop had been American Flag and By Hisself, Gun Boat and First Mate, Florence Nightingale and Maid at Arms, Flagship and Lightship, Flotilla and … heavens, he couldn’t remember the other names anymore. His memory wasn’t what it used to be. He was getting old. But there had been thirteen foals, nine of them chestnuts like Man o’ War. He remembered their colors because he’d been one of those looking at the muzzle hairs to determine true color. Masquerade’s filly had died soon after birth, so that had made a total of twelve in the first crop, and all had been given names as dramatic as their sire’s.

  “Were they like him?” the young woman asked, interrupting his thoughts again.

  “How do you mean? Speed?”

  “Well, yes,” she said.

  “Some were very fast and became champions,” he said. “But none were as fast as he was. Not any of them or any in all of his other great crops that followed. There never was another Man o’ War.”

  His eyes shifted to the older woman, and he found her listening intently, too. Strange, he thought, that these two women so far removed from the track as he knew it should be so keenly interested in the breeding of racehorses. Maybe beneath all this modern sophistication and concern for one’s appearance and self …

  “Another thing,” he went on. “While Man o’ War was a very successful sire, he never got colts with the early speed he’d shown himself. They didn’t do too much as two-year-olds, but matured slowly. They raced best at three or later. American Flag was the best of his first crop, then came Crusader and Mars and Edith Cavell the next year. Scapa Flow and Genie and Bateau and Clyde Van Dusen followed. Those were his outstanding runners but he had other colts winning, too, lots of them, all from his first five crops.”

  “And after that?” the young woman asked. “Did he continue being so successful?”

  He studied her face a long while, his own eyes clouding. “Not quite,” he admitted. “War Hero and Boatswain came along in the 1929 crop and War Glory in 1930, all pretty good horses. But we had to wait until 1934 before he struck it rich again with the champion War Admiral and the excellent filly Wand. And after them came War Relic …”

  “But what caused his decline after such a brilliant beginning during those first five years?” the young woman persisted.

  Danny Ryan glanced at his watch. It was almost time for the big race. “I have to go,” he said abruptly, his gaze shifting to the television screen a short distance from the table. “This is no place to watch the running of the first Man o’ War Handicap.”

  He hurried across the room, rousing himself from the past as he went along. Leaving the restaurant, he entered the vast, open level of the third floor. There were thousands of people milling about but no one was being mobbed or trampled. New Aqueduct was so spacious in every respect that everyone had room to breathe. He wasn’t certain at all that he liked so much comfort.

  Despite all the room, a man with his head down bumped into him. “Sorry,” the jostler said.

  “Quite all right,” Danny Ryan answered politely. The collision had made him feel better. Some things at a track would never change.

  As he neared the escalator someone else bumped into him. This man, too, had his head down, reading his program. There was no apology and the man beat him to the moving stairs.

  Reaching the lower lobby, he noted that the track police were everywhere, not so much to keep order as to direct people to proper gates and answer questions. New Aqueduct was still a little confusing to New Yorkers not used to such lavishness.

  He moved slowly through the throng, almost feeling his way toward the one special gate he was aiming for. It made him think, somehow, that he was at the bottom of a vast, spectacular monument, and he became very eager to reach the top. He tried to move faster, his general mood of gaiety darkening despite the lobby’s bright panels of orange, yellow, green, and red.

  Reaching his gate, he nodded to a track policeman, showed his pass, and stepped through the double doors. Once within the structure’s vast confines, he breathed easier and walked more freely down a long corridor. On either side of him were many rooms and offices. He passed them quickly. Only those who “belonged” were allowed in this section. It was quiet, almost peaceful compared to what was going on in the four tiers of stands overhead. But it was still like groping one’s way through the catacombs of another world.

  A man standing at the door of an office marked PLACING AND PATROL JUDGES waved and said, “Hello, Danny. You’re late today.”

  “Not late. Just been looking around,” he answered, almost defensively.

  “Tell me, Danny, was he as really, truly great as they say he was?”

  “He broke all the records. He broke down all the horses that ran against him. What more do you want?” Once again, Danny was surprised at the defiance in his voice. What was wrong with him today? People were just interested in Man o’ War and wanted to know more about him, that was all. It was natural, today of all days.

  He turned around and went back to the man at the door. “Maybe you’d understand better if I reminded you he was the odds-on favorite in every race he ever started, all twenty-one of them. You ever heard anything like that before … or since?”

  “No, I never have, Danny. As you say, I understand better when you put it that way … in facts and figures, I mean, not legends or saga. They’re for the people up in the stands.”

  Danny was glowering in the other’s face. “And after he was retired he had at least one offspring win a race each year from 1924 through 1953. That’s a span of thirty years, Clem. Ever hear of any other sire matching it?”

  “No, Dann
y, I never did,” the man said, backing off. “Like you say …”

  Danny Ryan didn’t wait to hear any more. He continued down the corridor of concrete, wanting very much to be alone, if only for a moment.

  “Speed an’ mo’ speed, dot’s what makes a good hoss,” he had heard a groom say in a slow, quiet drawl long ago. But there had been lots more to Man o’ War than sheer speed. He had stamina, courage, and heart. And, fortunately, he’d been able to pass much of it on to his colts and fillies. His record as a sire was a great one, but it might have been still greater if Mr. Riddle had not been so adamant about restricting most of Man o’ War’s services to his own collection of broodmares. No one person, even a very wealthy man, could maintain the quality of mares so necessary for a great sire.

  As he had told that young woman back in the restaurant, those first five crops by Man o’ War were his banner years. After that … well, as she so quickly observed his reluctance to discuss it, there was a decline in Man o’ War’s record as a sire. Not that he didn’t get race winners and a few great ones like War Hero and Boatswain, War Admiral and Wand. But never again was the proportion of exceptional horses the same as it had been during those first five years.

  Danny scuffed his way along the corridor. He knew from having been there that it hadn’t been due to the decline of Man o’ War himself, for he had remained a vigorous, healthy stallion. Instead it had been the lack of distinguished mares with which the farm had been restocked after Miss Daingerfield’s retirement in 1930. The mares that had been purchased by Mr. Riddle after that had, for the most part, been inferior to those in the first band. And, of course, Mr. Riddle would allow very few mares not his own to be bred to Man o’ War.

  Had that been a selfish decision? Danny shrugged his big shoulders. Who was he to judge Mr. Riddle’s actions? Hadn’t he been as selfish as anyone else in his hunger to call Man o’ War his very own? Didn’t he, even now—some forty years later—still feel a certain resentment when anyone questioned the record and legend of his colt? What Man o’ War might have done had he been retired to an established, successful stud farm with many proven mares was not for him to say.

  Men waved to Danny as he passed the Film Patrol Room and the Barber Shop, but, lost in thought, he ignored them all and plodded deeper into the confines under the stands.

  “There goes Danny,” one of them said. “It must be getting time for the feature.”

  “You’d never know it to look at him,” another answered. “He looks lost.”

  “No, he ain’t lost. He’s thinkin’. Danny’s a walkin’ record book.”

  Danny Ryan came to a sudden stop before one of the rooms and peered inside. It was such a huge room that it made the little men occupying it seem smaller than they actually were,

  “Hi, Bill,” he said to a jockey sitting close to the door. “You’ve got a good horse going for you in the feature.”

  The young jockey smiled. “We’re goin’ light, if that’s what you mean, Danny. Just 108 pounds.”

  “That’s light,” Danny agreed, and for a moment he shifted uneasily on his big feet. “You ought to make it real tough for Bald Eagle.”

  “That’s for sure,” the jockey said.

  Danny Ryan glanced around the room, noting the water basins, low and just the right height for the little men. At the far end was a recreation lounge, where some of the boys were playing Ping-Pong and pool while awaiting the call for their races. There were bunks and dressing rooms and showers and steam rooms … everything to make the jockeys comfortable and, like everything else, a far cry from the old days.

  He walked on. How much he wished he’d been born small … even now, after all these years.

  There was a large crowd waiting for the elevator and he joined them, nodding and smiling.

  “It turned out to be a fine day after all, Ed,” he said to an old friend.

  “Yes, I was afraid the sun wouldn’t make it,” the other answered. “Can’t take the cold like I used to.”

  Danny said, “Me, too.” Ed was about his own age. Ed had seen Man o’ War. “It had to shine today,” he added in a low voice. He didn’t want the others to overhear. They wouldn’t have understood.

  “I suppose so. But it never mattered to him what kind of a day it was, Danny. He always ran the same way, hot, cold, muddy, or dry. He was a big horse, all right.”

  “He sure was. They don’t come like him anymore. They never did. They never will. Everything about him was big.”

  “Omaha and Sun Beau were bigger in size,” the other reminded him.

  “Taller, you mean, and not so muscled in chest and shoulders.”

  “But Roseben was.”

  “Yeah, but Roseben didn’t have his large and powerful quarters,” Danny answered.

  “Whopper did.”

  “But not his stride. No other horse ever covered twenty-nine feet in one leap.”

  “No, and I guess they never will,” the other admitted. “He had the best of everything and in perfect proportion. It’ll be a long time …”

  “It’ll be never,” Danny said louder than he’d meant to.

  A young reporter standing behind them said, “You old-timers sure all sound alike today. But just what did Man o’ War ever beat?” he needled.

  Danny didn’t turn around. “Golden Broom, Upset, Blazes, John P. Grier, Wildair, Paul Jones, On Watch, and Donnacona,” he answered, “… all top horses that would have been champions any year but his.”

  “But he was never thoroughly tried,” the young man persisted. “He never raced after three, so he never proved himself as a handicap horse.”

  Danny felt the hot blood flushing his face, but still he didn’t turn and face the young man behind him. “Man o’ War didn’t have to prove himself any further,” he answered evenly. “He carried more weight at two than most horses carry at three, and at three he carried higher weights than any older horse has ever been asked to race with. Don’t you ever read the record books?”

  There was complete silence behind him. He had known such arguments before, often from sportswriters who, even though young in years, should have known better. He was resigned to it, realizing that such comparisons of today’s “super horses” with Man o’ War would never end. If they had only seen him!

  The elevator doors opened and Danny went inside the car with the others. A few jockeys came running up, too, crowding into the large cage. Quietly, the elevator left the ground floor and began rising.

  “Upsy-daisy,” one of the jockeys said, his small body lost in the center of the packed throng. “We’re leavin’ the gate.”

  “Then don’t lose your whip like you usually do,” a photographer said. “You’ll need it to get out.”

  “Imagine,” the jockey went on, “a track providin’ us with a rooftop penthouse to watch the races from. That’s class, brother.”

  “Maybe they expect you guys to learn somethin’,” the other answered.

  “Wise guy,” the little man muttered.

  They rose to the topmost tier of the great stands, the height of a ten-story building, before the doors opened. Danny didn’t push his way out. He was in no mood to hurry. There was still plenty of time before the horses came onto the track for the running of the first Man o’ War Handicap.

  He found he was not alone; the young reporter had waited, too, for the others to leave. “Another thing, Danny,” the fellow said eagerly. “I know I haven’t been around as long as you and maybe I’m stepping on your toes, but Man o’ War seems like something Hollywood dreamed up. He couldn’t have been as good as you old-timers say.”

  “He was no Hollywood horse,” Danny said patiently. “Come to think of it, what he did was not in the Hollywood tradition of an exciting racehorse at all. He had things too much his own way. He made every race look easy at any weight, any odds. He was exciting only if you saw him do it.”

  Danny waited for the younger man to leave the elevator, then followed him down the corridor. Together they en
tered a door marked PRESS. There was nothing within to obstruct the view, and for a moment Danny’s eyes swept over the vastness of open space that stretched before him.

  The mile and one-eighth track with its dun-colored surface was directly below. Inside the main oval was the mile turf strip, and inside that was the seven-furlong steeplechase course. All kinds of courses for all kind of horses, that was New Aqueduct, Danny mused. And, as if that wasn’t enough for the spectators, two blue-water ponds decorated the infield.

  His eyes traveled beyond the sprawling track to the stable area with its modernistic barns and dormitories for the grooms. That, too, was a far cry from the old Aqueduct he and Man o’ War had known so well.

  He watched a jet airliner take off from Idlewild Airport a few miles in the distance, following its flight until it disappeared over the jagged New York skyline. Only then did his gaze return to the track below, and he muttered aloud, “It’s the same old clay base, anyway.”

  The young reporter was still standing nearby, and he said, “You mean they put a new surface on the track without changing the base?”

  “Yeah, it’s the same old base all right,” Danny said. “Just as Man o’ War’s hoofs knew it, and those of Equipoise, Exterminator, and Domino, going all the way back to 1894.”

  “That’s interesting,” the young man said, making a note of it on a piece of paper.

  “It’s a fast track, they say,” the young man went on.

  “Naturally,” Danny said, his eyes following the takeoff of still another jet airliner from the huge airport. “Like everything else these days,” he added. He wondered if the arrival and departure of so many planes bothered the horses and decided it did not. They, too, had adjusted to the new era.

  Then he saw the familiar deep blue of Rockaway Inlet flowing in from the Atlantic Ocean, while above it fluttered hundreds of seagulls. There were some things that would never change. Mother Nature was here to stay.

  “They’ve got a three-inch cushion of dirt and sand out there, sifted and filtered so it’s fast without being abrasive to horses’ hoofs,” the young man said, as if eager to impress.