Sit on the track apron on a given race day and conversation is bound to turn to the merits of one particular horse versus another. Easy Goer versus Sunday Silence? Affirmed or Alydar? Man o’ War or Secretariat? These debates may feel like an exercise in futility — can one ever really say which Big Red (or heck, any other horse) is the best? —  but Tony Ryan Book Award-winning author Mark Shrager is not one to shrink from a challenge.

In his new book, “The Greatest Racehorse? Man o’ War and the Judgment of History,” Shrager takes on the titanic task of resolving that debate, pitting the immortal original Big Red against a long list of other giants of the sport in an attempt to answer the age-old question: who is the greatest racehorse? To settle this debate —  at least in as much as one can — his book tackles that question by breaking down the criteria that could go into considering “the greatest racehorse” and then comparing Man o’ War to other greats. From Exterminator to Flightline, Shrager examines each criterion and each horse in relation to Man o’ War to arrive at which one illustrates each. The book’s end takes on one more important topic in considering who is the greatest: context.

To answer the title’s question, Man o’ War’s era and the end result of his career must be a part of the discussion, a reminder of what racing was able to endure thanks to a 16-hand chestnut dynamo with a singular name.

In the spirit of answering questions, Mark and I sat down recently for a conversation about the who, what, when, why, and how of this unique book.

Where did you get the idea to write this book?

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As I became more interested in [racing], I began finding myself bumping up against people who would ask the question, ‘Who’s the greatest horse that ever lived?’ It always seemed to come up Man o’ War, Man o’ War, Man o’ War. I was thinking that he lived during the Woodrow Wilson administration. Surely someone has come up with a better horse than that. So, I started looking at Citation and Swaps, and then Secretariat came along, and I  thought, ‘Oh, this horse just blows everybody away. There’s no way can anyone go with Man o’ War over Secretariat,’ but they still did.

I have always been one who looks at numbers and how numbers prove things, or more often than that, don’t prove anything. So, I started looking at Man o’ War and the numbers and his speeds and his times and things which aren’t necessarily inclusive. I saw that each one of those numbers made a very abrupt turn up to the good side of the graph when Man o’ War was there. There were other things happening in the world, but Man o’ War clearly had a lot to say about how racing was going on as a sport and how it was going on as an industry and a business. I became more and more convinced that after all that time, it turned out everybody else was right. Man o’ War was the greatest force that ever lived.

So, once I realized that, I had to write it and then decided to write it this way.

How did you pitch it to your publisher that they got behind it? Like, what exactly did you say that got them to go, “Hey, yeah, we should do that?”

I had begun writing a book about Man o’ War and Upset, and as I got into it, not too far, fortunately, I reread Dorothy Ours’ book and realized she’d already written the whole thing. But I had all this Man o’ War information. I went after this other thing of who’s the greatest horse of all time and wrote up a summary of what I thought I might do. It had a lot of the stuff that’s in the table of contents now.

I basically told them I’d like to write this book about Man o’ War. He’s very popular. He’s somewhat controversial, if you’re me. I would like to write this and compare him to other horses and make a decision as to whether he was or wasn’t the greatest horse of all time. It turned out that was the only issue they had with it, I thought this was funny, but the book is called “The Greatest Racehorse?”

They didn’t like the question mark. Somebody said, ‘Well, titles with question marks don’t sell.’ And so, they wanted to just call it The Greatest Racehorse. Well, that gives away the answer before anybody reads the book and I managed to convince them of that. So, we went with “The Greatest Racehorse?” and I’m glad we did. I think it’s a much better title that way.

You say the book seeks to answer the question, “Who was America’s greatest racehorse?” How did you come up with the methodology you apply here?

The great Dr. Fager (Jim Raftery/BloodHorse photo)

I have a very good friend, who is a turf writer, and she and I used to have this argument. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had conversations with her that ended, ‘Well, we’re just going to have to agree to disagree.’ I used to talk about Dr. Fager was better this way and Spectacular Bid could do this, and Man o’ War didn’t win that much money. I would go over horse after horse after horse and comparing everybody to Man o’ War. She would say, ‘Well, you can’t expect him to beat every horse that ever lived. You’ve got to pick one horse and argue your horse against my horse.’

What are the things that make a really good horse? You’ve got to be able to dominate other horses. If you’re winning six out of 11 or three out of five, and you’re beating whichever horse it is by a quarter of a length or a nose or whatever, that’s not really dominance. Secretariat winning [the Belmont Stakes] by 31 lengths, winning the Arlington Invitational by nine lengths, that was dominance.

Gameness. Everybody looks at Affirmed and says that he may not have been the greatest horse that ever lived, but he sure was the gamest. You look at those races, one after another after another. Winning major races, that’s important. I just went through all the other qualities that I think give a horse a claim for greatness. Just started listing them and came up with 12 or 13 at first and then came up with a couple more.

See, this was an important part of what I wrote. It has part one, excellence, and part two, greatness. And I see them as different things. An excellent horse is one who wins lots of races and beats lots of horses and can really run fast and go a distance of ground and do all the things we expect a horse to do. Greatness is something beyond that.

In Man o’ War’s case, with basically reviving his sport and possibly bringing it back to life, that’s beyond excellence. That’s greatness. And that’s, to me, what put Man o’ War up at the top.

Why did you feel qualified to take on this task of comparing Man o’ War to these other great racehorses?

It’s a good question. I think the reason that I felt justified in writing this book about Man o’ War, because I’ve been talking about him for so long to so many people who are making such either brilliant or stupid arguments in one way or the other. I feel like I’ve been up against every argument there could possibly be. Who else is writing it? No one else has written a book like this, I don’t think, since the BloodHorse.

I just thought, ‘Why not?’ I’ve argued this thing probably more than 99% of the people that are interested in it. So why not me? I just decided I know I can do it, just what’s the best way to do the thing, and it came up with this.

How did you go about picking horses for each chapter?

Kelso, John Henry, Forego in 1983. (NYRA/BloodHorse Library)

I had horses in mind for a lot of them. Longevity, you’re not going to use anyone but John Henry. Secretariat was the only one I ever had under dominance, and Affirmed was the only one under gameness. I might have two or three under some of the categories just based on being a racing fan since I was a kid. Then, where I had a controversy in my own mind, I would go to the Daily Racing Form book “Champions” and would look through the line items of the horses’ individual races and try and come up with which one I thought made the most sense. That was mostly it.

There are also some horses I just like a lot. I’ve always had a great feeling for Exterminator. I think he was just a wonderful horse, and I wanted to get him in here somewhere, and carrying and giving weight was as good a place as any.

What was the toughest chapter to write?

The toughest chapter was Citation, and not because I don’t have a lot of regard for Citation. He won one race less in his biggest year than Man o’ War won in his lifetime. The issue is that the category I chose for Citation was Overcoming Adversity, because he really did. He missed an entire season. And then he came back to the races, and they threw Noor at him. The reason that chapter was tough is that, as far as we know, Man o’ War overcame a very minimal level of adversity, if even that. An awful lot of what goes on in a racing stable never gets out to those of us in the public. And so, nothing really got out about Man o’ War as far as the injury. That was what made it tough: I just didn’t have the information that I was able to flow into the other chapters.

Why is it important to share the context of Man o’ War’s career and his role in the sport’s renaissance?

I’m really trying to differentiate the greatness from the goodness. I could see that the sport’s numbers were going up and that Man o’ War had something to do with it. The question I had was, why did they go down? What was causing the numbers to drop off the cliff? I started looking at the progressive era again. I had started to write a book maybe 20 years ago about the progressive era and the racetracks closing in New York. I knew it had a major impact. And so, what else? World War I had something to do with it and the “Black Sox Scandal.”

One article I found described him as racing’s public relations man. That’s exactly that was part of his role. Man o’ War came along, and baseball was going down the tubes, and the war was going on, and the progressive era and everybody hated gambling or loved gambling. Here was this pure, beautiful, unbeatable racehorse who was saying, ‘No, there’s a good side to this sport, too, and I’m it. I’m going to show you what real horse racing can look like at its very finest.’ And he did it.

He brought people back to the races when they could have gone back to doing any number of different things. So, you’ve got to give him points for that.

Why does Man o’ War continue to capture the imagination of fans?

I don’t really know what the answer to that question is, but he’s been in the fandom’s imagination for over 100 years now. I don’t think he’s going away. Has there been another horse in the world whose funeral was broadcast nationwide? I haven’t found anybody else’s that was talked about, but his was. Who’s got a bigger statue in horse racing in the Kentucky Horse Park? Nobody but Man o’ War. He’s the old saying ‘bigger than life,’ but he really is. Something about him got into America’s imagination and has never gone out and probably never will. Some things are beyond reasoning about. They’re just there. I guess that’s it with him.

People love Man o’ War. He died in 1947, before I was born. He has been gone a long time. I can see why people would be drawn to him and have a huge respect for him and how he could be like a, I don’t know, almost a mythical being, except he was real. He captured everyone’s imagination, and he’s never let him go.

What do you hope readers take away from this book?

The Man o’ War statue at Kentucky Horse Park (BloodHorse Library)

I’m hoping that they’ll appreciate that this is a game that’s gone on for a very long time, has had some incredibly interesting personalities, and that good horses have existed since at least Man o’ War’s day, and since before that, and will go on doing it.

It’s the sport that has just overwhelmed everything else because it’s so interesting and so colorful and so beautiful and has so much controversy and so much interest and so much history. I can just go on with this run-on sentence forever, but that’s what it’s all about. The bottom line is, what I want people to know about this sport is that I love it, they can love it, too, and that there’s a lot to know and a lot to learn. It’s there for them if they want to undertake the effort to read the books.

If you’re going to do this, then you really have to get beyond the stats because so many things change over the years. You don’t really know what the stats mean after a while. I’ve studied them as much as anybody. I don’t know whether one is better than the other. But it’s important to know they exist.

I just want people to know that this is a really great game. The more you’re exposed to it, the better you’re going to like it, I think.