from the Harness Racing Museum and Hall of Fame

Goshen, NY — He was like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods combined, but surpassed them in his ability to sell products and attract spectators to live venues. His winning percentage topped Jordan’s shooting average or Woods’s dominating golf tournament record. He was hands-down the most famous athlete in what used to be America’s most popular spectator sport. And exactly 100 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 horse.

The Best There Ever Was details not only his success on the track — at a time when harness racing drew larger crowds and offered bigger purses than any other sport — but also his role as America’s first “marketing machine.” Just the presence of his name or image on a product advertisement would skyrocket sales numbers, and that it did, selling cigars, washing machines, stoves, automobiles, and a host of other products.

The Best There Ever Was is more than a sports history — it is a moving human drama played out by the three men who owned the horse: his Indiana breeder, Dan Messner; casino owner M. E. Sturges, who sold Dan Patch for $20,000 (a fortune in those days) and is rumored to have spent the rest of his life trying to buy him back; and finally Marion W. Savage, whose entrepreneurial skills presaged today’s sports marketing geniuses.

Through the lives and times of these three men and their contemporaries, award-winning reporter, anchor, and author Sharon B. Smith paints a fascinating social portrait of the development and ascendancy of America’s Midwest. Dan Patch was both the most celebrated and the richest athlete of his time — a name to be forever remembered as the best there ever was.

The Best There Ever Was is written by Sharon B. Smith, an award-winning reporter/anchor of televised horse racing on ESPN, NBC, and SportsChannel Los Angeles. She is the author of five books on horses and racing. A graduate of Northwestern University Ms. Smith attended journalism school at the University of Texas. She lives in Milford, Conn. Sharon Smith will be available to sign copies of her book at The Harness Racing Museum on Hall of Fame Day (Sunday, July 1) from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Call 845.294.6330 to reserve your signed copy.

The Best There Ever Was–Dan Patch and the Dawn of the American Century is now available at The Harness Racing Museum online on or site. 244 pages. Hardcover. Archival photographs. $27.95.

The Harness Racing Museum & Hall of Fame is located at 240 Main Street in Goshen, N.Y., and is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (last tour 4 p.m.) Thanks to USTA support the Museum is currently offering free admission for walk-in visitors and $4.00/person for group docent-guided tours. For information on the Museum, special events, gift shop services and educational programs the Museum offers, please call 845.294.6330 or visit www.harnessmuseum.com.