Yankee Doodle Dandy: The Life and Times of Tod Sloan - Hardcover

Dizikes, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300083343 ISBN 13: 9780300083347

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2000

Synopsis

In the 1890s, feisty Tod Sloan (1874–1933) abandoned the centuries-old jockey tradition of riding in a straight sitting position and instead crouched low on the neck of his horse. The result was not only a string of victories for young Sloan but also a revolution in horse racing. In this entertaining book, award-winning author John Dizikes recounts the remarkable story of the Indiana boy who rose from obscurity to become the most famous jockey in the United States and Great Britain at the turn of the century. Dizikes evokes the turbulent, colorful world of horse racing and gambling in which Tod Sloan rocketed to celebrity—and from which he was just as dramatically ejected.
 
Sloan’s innovative riding style helped to transform horse racing into the first nationally popular spectator sport, drawing huge crowds and vast amounts of betting money. But Sloan’s career was crushingly ended by those who resented and envied him. A dandy, a big spender, a man whose company women loved, Sloan related to horses in an almost magical way yet foundered in his dealings with people. This book is the biography of a diminutive man who lived in large style, and lives on in George M. Cohan’s musical Little Johnny Jones andErnest Hemingway’s short story “My Old Man.” The book is also much more—a fascinating cultural history that illuminates the history of horse racing and betting, the democratization of sport, changing conceptions of masculinity, the hypocrisy of Victorian morality, the lionizing and demonizing of celebrities, and a variety of other inviting topics.

About this title

About the Author

John Dizikes received the National Book Critics Circle Award for Opera in America, published by Yale University Press. He teaches at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and is occasionally to be found at the Santa Anita race track.

From the Inside Flap

In the 1890s, feisty Tod Sloan (1874-1933) abandoned the centuries-old jockey tradition of riding in a straight sitting position and instead crouched low on the neck of his horse. The result was not only a string of victories for young Sloan but also a revolution in horse racing. In this entertaining book, award-winning author John Dizikes recounts the remarkable story of the Indiana boy who rose from obscurity to become the most famous jockey in the United States and Great Britain at the turn of the century. Dizikes evokes the turbulent, colorful world of horse racing and gambling in which Tod Sloan rocketed to celebrity-and from which he was just as dramatically ejected. Sloan's innovative riding style helped to transform horse racing into the first nationally popular spectator sport, drawing in huge crowds and vast amounts of betting money. But Sloan's career was crushingly ended by those who resented and envied him. A dandy, a big spender, a man whose company women loved, Sloan related to horses in an almost magical way, yet foundered in his dealings with people. This book is the biography of a diminutive man who lived in large style, and lives on in George M. Cohan's musical Little Johnny Jones and Ernest Hemingway's short story "My Old Man." The book is also much more-a fascinating cultural history that illuminates the history of horse racing and betting, the democratization of sport, changing conceptions of masculinity, the hypocrisy of Victorian morality, the lionizing and demonizing of celebrities, and a variety of other inviting topics

Reviews

Tod Sloan (1874-1933) was the Yankee Doodle in George M. Cohan's musicalDthe phenomenon who became the winningest jockey in the U.S., then crossed the Atlantic to conquer the turf in England. He was, as Dizikes makes clear, the first sports mega-celebrity: "Where Tod Sloan led, Babe Ruth and Pel and Michael Jordan have followed." Alas for Sloan, after he had amassed fame and fortune, his popularity faded quickly, and he died, as he was born, in obscure poverty. In tracing the arc of Sloan's career, Dizikes (who won the National Book Critics' Circle award for Opera in America) paints a vivid canvas of the Gay '90s and what Dizikes calls its "flash culture," featuring Diamond Jim Brady, Lillian Russell and "plungers" (big gamblers) like Pittsburgh Phil Smith. Part of Sloan's successDand notorietyD as a jockey was his origination of the "forward seat," with the jockey sitting up on the horse's withers and crouched forward over its neck, the position now standard for all jockeys but still crude and controversial in the 1890s. But did Sloan originate it, Dizikes asks, or only popularize it? Part of the fascinating social history that Dizikes reconstructs surrounding horse racing in that era concerns the lower-class origins of the forward seat. He also portrays the shady world of the sport of kings in the U.S. at the time, when cheating was rampantDraces were commonly fixed, and horses were doped (one actually dropped dead in the winner's circle); it was a suspicion of cheating that led to Sloan's downfall. Dizikes's well-written and engaging history deserves a wide readership and Yale is planning a national media campaign (based on Dizikes's NBCC-winning reputation), with special outreach to sports media, so word will get out widely to fans of horse racing, sports enthusiasts in general, and especially readers interested in the role of sports within the wider culture. 30 illus.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Yankee Doodle was a horse ridden by the world's greatest jockey in a George M. Cohan play. Tod Sloan was perhaps the greatest American jockey, with a high winning percentage of mounts in the United States and England. He was also commemorated in Hemingway's short story, "My Old Man." The key to his success was an innovative style of riding that is now the norm in horse racing. Sportswriters of the time labeled his style the "Monkey Seat": Sloan rode motionless, seated high up and lying forward on the horse's neck, as all jockeys do today. This work is fun to read for Sloan's engaging world of hedonistic charactersDlawyers, land barons, pugilists, Wall Streeters, captains of industry, even English royaltyDall gambling, spending, eating, and constantly drinking. Sloan's story is of a physically small person becoming a giant among his peers. Although he made a fortune, the hard-living gambler did not hold on to much of it. Optimistic to the end, he ordered cigars on his deathbed in 1933. A charming, well-researched life and times of a little revolutionary; highly recommended. Marty Soven, Woodside, NY
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Tod Sloan is not an entirely forgotten figure in the annals of Thoroughbred racing, but it is a revelation, even for racing aficionados, to learn how thoroughly the flamboyant jockey dominated and revolutionized the sport in the 1890s. Sloan emerged from the poverty and obscurity of an Indiana childhood to become the most celebrated rider in California, New York, and finally England, where he hobnobbed with the Prince of Wales and other nobles until his impertinence and extravagant lifestyle created enough ill will to have him banned from racing in his prime. His offenses--accepting a gratuity and wagering on a race--were, if not trivial, common enough, but they put an end to a brilliant career that left its legacy in the form of a new style of riding. Sloan popularized what was then called the "forward seat," or, more derogatively, the "monkey crouch," but which has no name now because the style, with its short stirrups and low, forward-leaning posture, is universally accepted. Dizikes details the jockey's rise to fame and fortune and his subsequent fall in the context of the times and of the evolution of racing, and he lends the story a poignancy that falls well short of tragedy but that, nonetheless, elicits considerable sympathy, even pity. The book illuminates a time, a sport, and a personality that merit remembrance. Dennis Dodge
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300083343
• ISBN 13: 9780300083347
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240