Seabiscuit and the Great Depression

I feel as though I spent the afternoon in the company of my mother’s parents when they were young… The years before World War I when anything seemed possible, the twenties when everything went crazy and there was no booze to be had to celebrate it, the years following the Crash when a peripatetic lifestyle was cause for resignation and invention, family and focus. When the whole country was waiting for something more, something to lift it out of a self-induced quagmire. This story somehow seems very timely, a warning against complacency: if this happened tomorrow, would we cope? Would we deal?

I don’t know whether my grandparents were remotely interested in horseracing, or if they cared one way or the other about the fortunes of Seabiscuit. I’d like to think, though, that the story I saw on the screen today really did have the effect it was portrayed as having had: to lift the spirits of an entire generation, to raise the possibility of the second chance.

I like these underdog stories. I wish David Millar had not crashed in the Time Trial this morning so he might have beaten Tour de France speed record despite the appalling conditions, for instance. I hope against hope that the Red Sox will be able to edge out the Yankees this year and then not choke. I root for teams in the World Cup that are described as having no chance. I’d root for Seabiscuit.