McGraw - Here comes Exterminator!: the long-shot horse, the Great War, and the making of an American hero

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the authors copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

Because of the Bear

My horse Romeo was a red bay gelding with huge dark eyes, a sculpted head, and unclear breeding, and the two of us were very close. Id been a horse-crazy child, so when I was twenty-three and bought Romeo, I realized a lifelong dream. Horse owning was one of those rare fantasies that turn out every bit as well as you imagine they will. Romeo was my pride and joy in the truest sense of that clich, and when he diedat only fifteen, from a rare, undignified illnessI was undone, unmoored. There have been plenty of other wonderful horses along the way, but Romeo was different: all mine, and wholly beloved.

A few years later, I was doing research for an article about a remount depot during the World War I era. I started seeing Exterminators name, in headlines that also mentioned records and winning and crowds. I remembered the illustrations from the childrens biography of Exterminator, Old Bones: The Wonder Horse, and pictured him as Wesley Dennis had drawn him, which was pretty much with Romeos doe-wide eyes and dark forelock. I read every article about Exterminator I could findthe stories of fans lining up to see him, cheering themselves hoarse, the crates of apples and ginger ale they sent him. Exterminator was a laudable athlete, but there was also something about him that drew people to visit him, write poems about him, and mail him fruit.

I knew what it was like to love my horse, and I was a fan of certain racehorses, but I couldnt understand how a racehorse most people would never actually know could encourage such devotion. As I read about Exterminator, I learned that besides the individuals involved, an extraordinary time in America pushed Exterminator to his extraordinary place and molded his image once he was there. I came to understand how many moments combined to make Exterminator so important, and I felt as if I needed to know all about them. I studied up on furlongs and pari-mutuels, the Hollywood star machine and turf writing. I wished I could see him the way crowds in the 1920s did: that unracehorselike demeanor, the blurred white heart on his forehead, the way he seemed to bow to the stands, his uniquely long body that could run and run.

I find shadows of Exterminator everywhere. At Laurel Park, in Maryland, which is the racetrack I go to the most, I think of the days people flocked to the track for a glimpse of Exterminator, and other days when they came masked against the Spanish flu. One summer day at Churchill Downs, I saw a retired thoroughbred standing with a pony. People lined up to pat them, and the scene reminded me of Exterminator and Peanuts, his favorite companion. But no one on the tourincluding the guidehad heard of them.

As Ive collated pdfs and rolled microfilm, I have realized that my work has quite a bit to do with Romeo, and what he meant to me. This is a book about the great racehorse Exterminator and the time he lived in. That means its also about the cavalry, horse training, turf writers, Binghamton, the movies, two world wars, hope, ambition, and desire. This book is also about something I hadnt realized that I already understood, even while I was trying to absorb all I could about starters and Shetland ponies and patent medicine. It is about the enormous loveand needwe can have for one singular horse.

In 1924, Tijuana, Mexico, was a place to break rules, which made it the right place for what trainer Henry McDaniel was trying to do with the racehorse Exterminator. He should not be racing such an old horse. He should not have agreed to work with the horses temperamental owner again after so many years apart. And most of all, he should not believe the horse could beat Man o Wars earnings record, which was the plan. In a long lifetime, McDaniel had not attempted anything this risky since the 1918 Kentucky Derby, when he had sent this same horse off at odds of 301. Today, at the Tijuana racecourse, there was much more at stake.

In his prime, Exterminator had performed miracles of speed, distance, and stamina. People adored him for his athleticism, for his resilience, and for himself. Exterminator was an oversized, ungainly horse with enormous eyes and a habit of nosing coat pockets for sugar. Hollywood invented a new kind of American celebrity for movie and sports stars, and fans followed Exterminator as they did Charlie Chaplin, Jack Dempsey, and Babe Ruth. Grantland Rice, the Dean of American Sportswriters, called him the greatest racehorse. Fans packed his races, met his trains, shouted his name, and wrote poems in his honor. Reporters compared him to Cassius, Paul Bunyan, and Abraham Lincoln. Ernest Hemingway compared himself to Exterminator.

So Henry McDaniel, in the Tijuana sunshine, trained a legend. In the past year, the old horse had faltered, brought low by age and lameness. To triumph, Exterminator needed to exceed Man o Wars earnings record by winning races, and McDaniel had risked his reputation for this reunion. With a win today, McDaniel would take his place as the trainer of the iron horse of the golden age. A legend would become real. But if the horse failed, the whole trip to Mexico would be pathetic, the story of a has-been pushed too far.

McDaniel, who is not given to sanguine prophecy, thought before Exterminator embarked on his far Western adventure, that the old fellow had a better than an average chance to train again, wrote a Washington Post reporter. This theory was based on his knowledge of the horse. McDaniel knows Exterminator to be temperamentally and physically right. He does not let anything disturb his calm. He is always a quiet gentleman. It was difficult to know if the reporter was talking about the horse or the man. They had been confused with each other before.

People packed the stands, wide-brimmed hats shading them from the hot sun. McDaniel could see that the horses on either side of Exterminator were flinging their heads and shuffling, their hooves churning up white dust, but Exterminator stood, patient. He rubbed his nose against the heavy webbing of the starting rope.

As always, Exterminator was ready.

How did Exterminator and Henry McDaniel find their futures bound together on that hot day in 1924, with so much in the balance? How could so many peoplein the stands, gathered around radios, scattered across Americalove this one horse and care so desperately if he won or lost?

Exterminators storyand Henry McDaniels as wellbegins just after the Civil War. Looking at McDaniels life, you could say he was made to discover Exterminator.

* * *

McDaniel used to tell reporters that he had been born on the Secaucus racetrack. His father, David McDaniel, was a brilliant racehorse breeder and trainer. By the time Henry arrived in 1867, the elder McDaniel was one of the most famous horse trainers in America; he won the Belmont Stakes three times in a row. From the time I could first toddle I heard race horses discussed, McDaniel wrote, their doings applauded or condemned and their shortcomings or virtues commented on. I grew up in an atmosphere of horses.

David McDaniel competed his horses throughout the South before the Civil War. Afterward, when racing was revived up north, he moved to Hoboken, New Jersey, with his wife and children. Henry was the youngest. McDaniel did not earn as much money there, and by 1869 some horses had been seized as payments for debt. Undaunted, he pooled his talents with others resources and formed a group of owners that became known as the McDaniel Confederacy. The group was destined to shake the turf to its centre, and dominated the race-course for a longer period than any one stable of which racing chronicles have any mention, wrote a reporter for the sportsmens weekly the Spirit of the Times. Jockeys wore blue and red silks, and called McDaniel the Colonel.