BLACK
ATHLETE SPORTS NETWORK
WHAT IF ......
SEABISCUIT
OF OUR IMAGINATION
WHAT IF SEABISCUIT'S JOCKEY WAS
BLACK
What if. What if. What if. What
if scenarios are a staple of good planning and strategy. Allow us to employ
this well established technique here in the Box today. Today because the
feel good Big Movie of the Summer opens today all over the country to much
fanfare. The book proved a sleeper best seller hard and soft. Now Seabiscuit
the movie will be everywhere.
Allow us to provide the kind of
'review' we Guarantee you will find no where else even if you search to
the far far corners of the Earth. A very good reason everyone should read
BASN every single day. We are fiercely and proudly unique in the world
of sports maybe even well beyond.
Seabiscuit the horse had his success
way back in 1938 in Depression America. Pre war America. Where pain and
suffering and a lack of optimism was widespread. Seabiscuit an unlikely
cast off horse captured the popular imagination with impressive success
on the track. The horse took on human characteristics as a loser who overcame
all the odds to become a very big Winner. Seabiscuit came with more an
owner, trainer and jockey equally suspect by conventional standards. They
all became Winners on Seabiscuit's back. Popular mythology has it that
Seabiscuit and his team were more popular than even the very popular President
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Now last year more than 60 years
later came the most recent book about Seabiscuit which went to the top
of The NY Times best seller list. Likewise the paperback edition that followed.
Now today the movie opens to much fanfare and Hollywood's latest lust for
box office gold. The early reviews have been mixed but probably good enough
for the film to do well.
With the preliminaries behind us
here's where we come on. Where the Box earns its keep. There are no African
Americans in this story certainly no where to be seen in the movie. You
can scan all the trailers on line, every photo on the official Website
and every behind the scenes look at the film and you won't come close to
seeing a Black face unless your computer screen is very very dirty. That's
no slam on the book or the movie or even the story itself.
It is another very vivid and very
recent look at life and sports in America. While the last thing the authors
and filmmakers intended they have constructed a 'grand' look at the United
States in the 1930s from a Black persons eyes. Largely invisible. Even
as Black Americans were bearing as much really far far more of the burden
of a society in deep trouble. But this is about sports not a commentary
on society in general and a positive view at that.
Imagine if Seabiscuit's owner, trainer
and especially his jockey had been Black. Far fetched. Yes and no. But
imagine it anyway. What a story that would have been in 1938. Talk about
inspirational. Seabiscuit the down and out horse no one wanted who becomes
the unlikely sports hero of the year. For some of the decade.
On top of that picture an African
American buying this hopeless horse for nothing and with his unschooled
trainer finds a young Black man who can ride like the wind itself. We have
just added additional layers of Drama and success against the odds that
would have made Seabiscuit's success not the sports story of the decade
but of the century.
Now back to Reality. There is no
way on this earth Seabiscuit the horse would have had a prayer of becoming
a legend if his owner, trainer and jockey were Black. Not in America. Not
in the 1930s. African Americans were not allowed anywhere near the thoroughbred
racing fraternity.
It was OK to defy the odds and race
a horse that should have been a certain loser but proves a winner, or have
a white owner who was not part of racing's established order and a white
trainer without credentials and most of all a jockey riding the horse who
really wasn't a jockey at all by conventional standards. But African Americans
in those roles. Forget it.
Yes yes. Joe Louis was the one other
sports figure of the 1930s who rivaled Seabiscuit for sports fame but that
was Boxing. African Americans were accepted in Boxing if grudgingly. But
horse racing. Or baseball. Or football. Or that new sport basketball. No
way. America had its values to protect.
The reality once again is that following
the end of the Civil War and up until the very early part of the 20th century
African Americans made themselves very prominent and successful in the
sport of horse racing as in so many other sports. Until things seemed to
be moving too fast and too far and the hammer came down hard.
Everywhere and especially in sports
anchored in the South as was horse racing. By the 1930s African Americans
had been completely eliminated from thoroughbred racing except maybe in
a few solidly Black enclaves among themselves.
Here is a fact for everyone Black
and white. To make our point as graphically as anyone needs. Black jockeys
completely dominated the early years of the Kentucky Derby. 13 of 15 riders
in the first Kentucky Derby in 1875 were Black. African American jockeys
won 15 of the first 28 runnings of the Kentucky Derby.
But since 1921 up until 2000 not
a single Black jockey appeared in the Kentucky Derby. The only one who
has since 1921 is Marlon St. Julien from Lafeyette, Louisiana who got to
ride a 50-1 long shot in the 2000 Derby only after another horse was pulled
out of the race just prior to the race.
So Seabiscuit the movie which opens
today without a Black actor anywhere in sight except maybe in some distant
background shots is an 'excellent' (sic) reflection of the reality of horse
racing in America as seen through the exploits of the most popular horse
of those times. But there is more. Today's horse racing industry is hoping
the Seabiscuit movie will be so popular that it will revive interest in
horse racing which is a sport and industry in decay once you move become
each year's Triple Crown races.
Well 60 years after Seabiscuit there
are still no African Americans in horse racing not owners, trainers or
jockeys except the one above. As always there are Black grooms, warm up
riders and stable 'boys' the oh so necessary behind the scenes out of sight
jobs thoroughbred racing depends on. So here we are in an era without the
same virulent form of racism as prevailed in the 1930s yet still thoroughbred
racing is as white as ever.
And once again an opportunity for
African Americans. If they seize it. Thoroughbred racing isn't going to
do anything to encourage African Americans. But African Americans can insert
themselves in thoroughbred racing if they choose. Let Seabiscuit the horse
be the inspiration. A Black athlete !! It is an endlessly fascinating fact
that all the horses that race today and always have are Black.
On a more practical level it's time
for African Americans to let thoroughbred racing know if they want Black
support in reviving their dormant industry there is only one way they can
do that. Reaching out actively to successful African Americans to become
owners. Turn talented Black Americans who are now in the background into
trainers.
And maybe most of all make it attractive
for young African American boys and girls to train to become jockeys. Without
a good number of Black jockeys it is virtually hopeless for the thoroughbred
industry to tap into the largest single buying power source in America
the African American community.
And it won't hurt to make the next
Hollywood extravaganza that features horse racing with a cast and a story
line that includes richly and will appeal to African Americans not as a
sociological exercise in the exclusion of African Americans as Seabiscuit
does but as a tale of the triumphant of a truly multi-racial society as
experienced through the eyes of a Black horse. Even if that Hollywood movie
must be based on a fictional script.
So Seabiscuit the movie and all
of you in Hollywood thanks if cynically so for producing another multi
million dollar flick about the reality of life and sports in America. It's
been very educational if not entertaining.
Whenever you want to reach us
with comments
or better yet an idea for a topic for the Box.......
blackbox@blackathlete.com
MARLON ST. JULIEN
LONELY BLACK JOCKEY
Black
Box Series
