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

Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America | Charles Leerhsen | A Great Story Told Incomparably Well

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Crazy Good: The Tr...

	Crazy Good: The True Story of Dan Patch, the Most Famous Horse in America Charles Leerhsen Simon & Schuster, 2008 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 22 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

What a horse.

I'm only partially through the book, but what a story. The fact that he couldn't even stand up when he was born, because of his leg deformity, makes him amazing. Then to become the great racer he was. Like Seabiscuit, he fought the odds because he had grit and determination. Oh how we as humans can learn from our four legged friends about life. I learned of Dan Patch when I was a little girl, back in the 40's and 50's. He and Seabiscuit have always been special to me. Dan Patch deserves to have a movie made about his life too.

A Great Story Told Incomparably Well

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.

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Crazy Good-Great

Best of the many Dan Patch biographies. Charles Leerhsen brings out the real story, warts and all. He uses his experience as a sports writer and author to tell the story in such a way that it can be understood by everyone, harness racing fan or not. It also tells a history of an America almost no history classes touch on. America was on the edge of going from a rural to urban nation. Horse ownership was far greater than automobile ownership and everyone knew who Dan Patch was.

A Great Lost History!

It can be a little bittersweet for a big harness racing fan to read this book. Realizing that the sport was, for a while, the most popular sport in America is sort of jarring to your psyche as you look at the empty grandstands and the same aging faces you have seen for years.

The book does a splendid job of capturing the lost history of Dan Patch, a pacer who set the world on fire during that time and is now all but forgotten by the public, as is the sport he dominated. I am a college history instructor, and as a test I asked my class to raise their hand if they knew who Dan Patch was...nobody did. One of the strengths of the book is that it is in the end a story about people more than about horses. Not an uplifting story though, as Dan Patch's owners and trainers were a sordid and greedy bunch. Supposedly there is a movie in development starring Emilio Estevez...if they try to make this a happy story like Seabiscuit, they will be missing the point entirely.

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good, indeed

a very well written and researched book that brings to life one of America's forgotten icons. it's hard to believe that harness racing was once one of America's most popular pastimes, but Leerhsen does well to bring the era, along with its heros and protagonists, back to life. the only detraction is that he breaks the mood from time to time by interrupting the story with his own, somewhat jaded, opinions.

reviews: 1, 2, page 3, 4, 5

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