His winning percentage was well above Jordan's shooting average or
Woods's domination of golf tournaments. And he sold products and
drew spectators like no one had ever done. He was hands-down the
most famous athlete in America's most popular spectator sport, and
exactly one hundred years ago you would have been hard pressed to
find anybody in the country who didn't know his name. He was Dan
Patch, and he was a racehorse.
At the turn of the last century, harness racing drew larger
crowds and offered bigger paychecks than any other sport. Its stars
were household names, and Dan Patch was both the most celebrated
and the richest. As successful as he was on the track, Dan Patch
was also America's first "marketing machine" the horse who could
sell cigars, washing machines, stoves, automobiles, and animal
feed, just by the presence of his name and photograph. "The Best
There Ever Was" examines the evolution of sports marketing through
the lives of Dan Patch and the three men who owned him: an Indiana
breeder, Dan Messner; M. E. Sturgis, who sold the horse for $20,000
(a fortune in those days) and spent the rest of his life trying to
buy him back; and Marion W. Savage of Minneapolis, whose
entrepreneurial skills presaged today's sports marketing
geniuses.
Any athlete who can draw a 90,000-person crowd, offer up world
records, and then sell a coal stove with his name on it may well be
the best by anybody's standards. A fun and fascinating read for
sports lovers.
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