Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Here is a book for anyone who likes a richly emotive story told incomparably well. "Crazy Good" by Charles Leerhsen offers the biography of Dan Patch (1896-1916), one of the most famous racehorses of all time. But Leerhsen's account is not just for horse lovers, though they will be in horse heaven. "Crazy Good" is a crazy good read for anybody.

My great grandmother's brother, Thomas Eleazer Fenton, was the blacksmith who designed a special horseshoe that made the young Dan Patch a winner. Growing up in Pine Village, the same town where Tom and his forge helped an otherwise clumsy horse to victory, I heard several stories about Dan Patch. "Crazy Good" gets all of them right. Leerhsen's book makes obsolete all previous books on the subject. "Crazy Good" is what its subtitle claims it is: "The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America." Leerhsen has composed nothing short of the authoritative biography of America's first sports celebrity--who happened to be a horse.

While reading the book, I set aside my great great uncle's role in the story and turned a critical eye on Leerhsen's narrative. To read "Crazy Good" is to watch a master at work. Leerhsen carves away anything that is not a perfect likeness and leaves a polished monument to a sporting legend and a bygone era. As a writer myself, I gasped more than once at the marvels of this book: that's how much Leerhsen's artistry surprised and impressed me.

"Crazy Good" gave me everything except the smell of horse sweat and maybe even that. I felt like a fly on the stable wall and in the grandstand. I saw and heard the moving spectacle of each race as if I had been there.

Like a present-day archaeologist stripping away layers of detritus to reveal the truth of the past, Leerhsen seamlessly segues from now to yesteryear. In the process, he brings to light a full history of Standardbred racing. He sorts fact from fiction. Then he tugs at your heart.

Who would have thought that a book about a sulky horse of long ago could be profoundly emotional? To achieve this end, "Crazy Good" traces a classical plot line, beginning with the halcyon days when Dan Messner of Oxford, Indiana, raised Dan Patch. Just when the horse begins to win, Messner sells the friendly, crowd-favored pacer. The mystery surrounding the sale spells suspense until, at a climactic moment, Leerhsen explains why Messner was willing to part with an extraordinary horse that would have brought the Messner household $1 million a year. Dan Patch sets record after record, only to begin a denouement at the hands of his last, and least empathetic, owner. Foreshadowed early in the book, Dan Patch's falling action leads to a resolution that leaves Leerhsen and his readers sad but wise.

Far more than a chronicle of a remarkable horse, "Crazy Good" mourns the loss of a time when small midwestern villages crafted an enviable culture that unfortunately attracted the attention of corrupt influences that ultimately destroyed not just fine horses but also the fiber of America. Leerhsen's frequent transitions to the present turn the spotlight on this theme. Those same towns where the youthful Dan Patch gamboled today are anemic places in comparison to the vital locations they were in the day of my grandparents. My great aunts and uncles and their myriad friends accomplished high school curricula more demanding than my college courses, spent lifetimes crafting personalities more entertaining than the Internet, and set out on incredible adventures with a daring that I cannot muster. Leerhsen has brought such people and such hamlets back to life for us to witness, enjoy, and respect. Make no mistake! This book is not nostalgic but realistic. "Crazy Good" is as heavyhearted as it is ecstatic. Leerhsen matches gusto with grief.

Given today's publishing business (which resembles nothing so much as the lamentable result when inmates take over the asylum), "Crazy Good" is exceedingly rare. It is accurate. It is well written. It is a page-turner. It is worthy. Like his protagonist, Leerhsen is a champion.

One of the most clever and witty sports biographies I've ever read, CRAZY GOOD isn't just a harness racing book, or even just a horse book--it's a fascinating look at the Ragtime era and every class of person who inhabited those fast-paced years, from Midwestern farmers to big city con men.

I'm staggered by the amount of research that went into this book and the casual way in which the author shares it. Leerhsen interjects his own dry commentary into the text, making a lot of material very fun in the same way a really good professor makes you laugh through a Powerpoint display. I've never been terribly interested in Dan Patch, the horse. I'm a Thoroughbred person myself, and even then, I don't go out of my way to read horse biographies. But if Dan Patch was just a nicer-than average stallion with an otherworldly gait, the people in his lives were anything but, and the whole gang is masterfully portrayed by Leerhsen. A must-read.

My husband and I are somewhat new to horse racing. He ordered this book for me thinking it was about a famous thoroughbred, not a harness race horse. We both read it and thought it was good. My only knock is that at times the pace of the book would slow to a crawl. I found myself looking ahead for more action passages. Eventually I did read it all.

This is some book and some story! It is a must read for the harness racing fan, but it is also a must read for the marketing student, the electronic media executive, and for anyone who likes a great biography.
Leehrsen writes so well, the story reaches out to everyone.
Dan Patch was something else. Did he know how to create a buzz a century ago?!!!

I could not put this book down even when I was dead tired. The story of Dan Patch and the cast of characters involved with this great horse was fascinating. It is a great period piece story begging to be made into a movie and the Coen Bros. would fit the bill. If you're into horse racing or just looking for a great read, buy this book.

A wonderful tale of a horse with a great and gentle nature - willing to visit with the kids in the crowd after his races - and unparalled ability to race, to win, and to entertain, despite the schmucks he had for owners and trainers.

Charles Leerhsen, Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, America's Most Famous Racehorse (Simon and Schuster, 2008)

There have been a select few times in this country when millions more people than usual knew the name of a horse. Modern examples abound: Barbaro, Cigar, Ruffian, Secretariat, Seattle Slew, a dozen others. Dan Patch, on the other hand, was a national superstar in a much more difficult time. Television hadn't been invented yet, radio was still an expensive proposition for the average joe, and let's face it: while harness racing was a whole lot more popular at the turn of the twentieth century than it was at the turn of the twenty-first, it was still a relatively obscure sport practiced mainly at county fairs. If you've ever attended the harness racing at a county fair, and you know a few things about reading a racing program, you've probably noted that about half the horses you see aren't actually professional racers; they're local workhorses who have a little extra speed. I can't swear to it, but I'm willing to place a few two-dollar win tickets on the same thing being true a century ago, perhaps even to a greater extent. So it was with Dan Patch, who started his illustrious career pulling a wagon. Would that he had ended it that same way, but we're getting ahead of ourselves.

<em>Sports Illustrated</em> writer Leerhsen used to be a bigwig at <em>Us</em> (before it became the <em>US Weekly</em> we're familiar with today), which makes sense if you look at the way this book is written. Sure, he covers the sports angle. You can't write a book about a racehorse without covering the sports angle (or, anyway, god help you if you try). But he's as, if not more, interested in Dan Patch As Social Phenomenon--the second half of Patch's career, and his subsequent retirement, when he was owned by a corrupt, desperate business magnate who was doing his darnedest to turn the horse into a brand, an equine supermodel back in the days before such things existed. And I will certainly give Leerhsen that I didn't think I'd give two hoots about that part of the story, but I was just as absorbed by that as I was by his descriptions of Patch's races (not as good as Hillenbrand's in <em>Seabiscuit</em>, better than Mitchell's in <em>Three Strides Before the Wire</em>). That's saying something for a hardcore racing geek. And part of the reason for its rating is this. The other part is because there simply aren't enough books (and especially not GOOD books) on harness racing out there. This didn't inject the new life (however temporary it may have been) into harness racing that I was hoping it would when it came out, but there's still hope for that, isn't there? ****