Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America [Hardcover]

Charles Leerhsen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 20, 2008

Now in paperback, the book that Newsweek calls “wonderful, witty, and wise,” vividly recounts a time 100 years ago when a racehorse thrilled America and became a legend.

• A great underdog story: Born with a bad leg and nearly destroyed at birth in 1896, Dan Patch became the greatest champion racehorse of his day, lowering the record for the mile by four seconds, an astounding achievement that stood for decades. Put to work pulling a wagon, he was entered in a race as a lark, but won it—and never lost throughout his long career.

• A bygone American era: Crazy Good is the story of America in simpler times, when the automobile was a novelty and most people preferred horses; an era when horse racing— pacers and trotters—was a dominant sport of the day.

• Colorful writing, colorful characters: Leerhsen populates his story with great characters, from the entrepreneur owner who made Dan Patch into a household name, to the alcoholic gambler who drove the horse to his greatest victories.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this spirited narrative, Leerhsen, an editor at Sports Illustrated, tells the now-forgotten saga of Dan Patch, a race horse that at one time drew an estimated 60,000 people to a single event in 1903. Admitting from the outset that the events of this book may seem as if they transpired on another planet, Leerhsen delivers a mesmerizing look into a strange corner of American sports and folk history when Dan Patch became a household word, earning roughly $1 million a year at a time when, Leerhsen notes, the-highest paid baseball player, Ty Cobb, was making $12,000. The arc of Dan Patch's career involves a range of often unscrupulous entrepreneurs: his first owner, Dan Messner Jr., who overpays by mistake for an injured pace horse and whose drunken decision to breed the pace horse with a wild stallion results in Dan Patch's birth; the horse's second trainer, Myron McHenry, who despite his conflicts with Messner grooms the horse for success; and M.W. Savage, the horse's final owner, who makes millions from Patch-related merchandise while overworking an obviously tired animal. But the heart of the book is Dan Patch himself, a horse with an almost human capacity for calm and determination that deserves to be rediscovered by a modern audience. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* It is difficult for the contemporary mind to fathom that there was a time when harness racing—trotters and pacers—was king in America. Yet from about 1885 to about 1915, an era when the horse and buggy were the most common form of transportation, harness racing was more popular than Thoroughbred racing, baseball, and boxing, hands down. And in the middle of that era, the undefeated pacer Dan Patch was the king of harness racing. After he ran out of equine competition, he paced against the clock, setting and repeatedly lowering track, state, and world records while drawing crowds up to 117,000 and pocketing appearance fees of up to $21,500. His most lucrative activity, netting up to $1 million a year at a time when the dollar was worth 20 times its current value, was “endorsing” scores of products ranging from tobacco tins to washing machines. Leerhsen tells the story of Dan Patch and his connections—the series of scoundrels and self-promoters who served as his owners and drivers—with humor and a fine sense of detail. The author no doubt owes a debt to Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit, which created both the mold and the audience for a certain kind of exhaustively researched book about a horse and his people; but that doesn’t make his work any less fascinating. --Dennis Dodge

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; First Edition edition (May 20, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743291778
• ISBN-13: 978-0743291774
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #683,348 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Charles Leerhsen, the author of Blood and Smoke: A True Tale of Mystery, Mayhem and the Birth of the Indy 500, has written articles for Sports Illustrated, Esquire, Rolling Stone, The New York Times Magazine, Money, People, TV Guide and Seventeen. He has been an editor at SI, People and Us Weekly, and spent 11 years at Newsweek, where as a senior writer he covered sports (including several Olympic Games), entertainment, family stories and breaking news. At Newsweek he won the National Mental Health Association award for a cover story on alcohol and the family. He has also co-written three best-selling biographies: Trump: Surviving at the Top, with Donald Trump; Press On! Adventures in the Good Life, with pioneer aviator Chuck Yeager; and The Last Great Ride, with entertainment mogul Brandon Tartikoff. Leerhsen's previous book was the highly-acclaimed Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America. He is currently working on a biography of Ty Cobb, his third book for Simon & Schuster.

Leerhsen has three daughters: Erica, an actor; Deborah, a banker; and Nora, a high school teacher in Chicago. He and his wife, the writer Sarah Saffian (www.saffian.com), live in Brooklyn.

See more about the author and his books at http://charlesleerhsen.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wacky Rich, May 24, 2008

By 

Dr. Wiffle Q. Tater - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America (Hardcover)

Rich referring to not just Dan Patch's owner, but also to Leerhsen's book, multilayered and full of tasty stuff. Villains and/or complicated characters abound. The one sure hero is Dan Patch, whose history and personality are revealed like a mystery being solved, while Leerhsen schleps us around the early 20th century racing circuit, and we bask in such emerging or time-honored cultural phenomena as mass marketing (often bogus), absurd product endosement, racetrack corruption, gross material excess, the cult of celebrity, and road domination by the motorcar. We meet descendants of some of the important humans in Dan's life and the current day keepers of the Dan Patch flame, including Leerhsen himself, the obsessed lead detective who's loved the track all his life. Besides fascinating, Crazy Good is misty-eyed poignant and laugh-out-loud hilarious, with fabulous writing ranging from sportspage dramatic to erudite to profane. Wacky Rich.

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Standardbred Legend Comes To Life, May 19, 2008

By 

Bicycle Day - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America (Hardcover)

Talk about a superstar, fans used to say that the legendary natural pacer, Dan Patch, would stop on the track before a race and look to the stands to count the house.

And from where this forgotten legend had come from, that gaze was worth its weight in gold.

Author Charles Leerhsen brings to life the amazing career of this Standardbred racer who set his mark on the track and in sponsorship deals; from chewing tobacco and toys to washing machines and automobiles, there was even an "air-line" named after the stallion.

Born with a crooked-leg in 1896, his original owner thought the Indiana-bred would only have a career in front of a delivery wagon. Not raced until age four, Dan Patch quickly became a sensation on the national Grand Circuit and in exhibition races; his average paced mile in his 73 GC events was under two minutes and he banked more than $2 million in prize money.

But it was September 8, 1906, at the Minnesota State Fair race track, where Dan Patch set an amazing mark before 93,000 fans. He paced a mile in 1:55, a record that stood for 32 years. Dan Patch was retired in 1909 and died in July 1916.

And with the triumph came tragedy and memories of a golden era fading away as years quickly rolled into decades. Dan Patch will again forever stand tall as a titan in sports, as Leerhsen has brought this incredible story back on track.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining, Enlightening, Engaging, May 30, 2008

By 

E. Harvey (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America (Hardcover)

Crazy Good is just plain good. Even if the only horses you've ever seen have policemen on them, you will enjoy this story of a superstar who just happened to be a horse.

Dan Patch, the star of this book, is unblemished and brilliant, but the people around him? Maybe not so much. Hence the captivating story.

Leerhsen tells the tale of this unlikely hero, born as he was with no expectations and a physical deformity to boot. He keeps the reader entranced through the emergence of Dan's brilliance and the story of how he draws hundreds of thousands of fans a year. The Beatles had nothing on Dan Patch.

Get this book for Father's Day, for Flag Day. Get it for any time you want to leave the past behind and allow yourself to be pulled in by the magnetism of a horse who lived 100 years ago.