Tuesday, September 2, 1913, was a day like no other in the long history of Thoroughbred racing. The setting was not a racetrack or a breeding farm, but the old Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, where as evening fell bankers and bookmakers, high-born and low, filled the seats in anticipation of what was to come.

James R. Keene
Born: Chester, England, in 1838
Died: New York City on January 3, 1913
Business: Stockbroker, investor, pool manager
Farm: Castleton Farm, Lexington
Best horses bought and raced: Domino, Spendthrift, Foxhall
Best horses bred: Commando, Colin, Sysonby, Kingston, Peter Pan, Maskette, Cap and Bells, Celt

The occasion was a horse auction, the long-awaited dispersal of the late James R. Keene's bloodstock. Forty-five of the finest Thoroughbreds ever produced in America were to pass that night before the podium of auctioneer George Bain.

At about 8:30 p.m., one can imagine a hush falling as lot number one stepped into the ring. All eyes would have been directed toward a brown stallion in the prime of life … well-muscled, a narrow path of white streaking a handsome face, long in the shoulder and wide across the hips-built for speed and power. Accustomed to huge crowds, he may have flicked his ears with mild interest as Bain's gavel began its rhythmic tap.

This was Colin, whose immeasurable courage and imperfect underpinnings had carried him to 15 victories without defeat; who had outgamed Man o' War's splendid sire in the 1908 Belmont Stakes, in a downpour, on three sound legs and an outsized heart; who had drawn fans to an otherwise empty New York track after wagering had been outlawed. Only death or disaster could have put such a creature of God onto something so lowly as an auction block.

It was whispered in the Garden that Colin was a shy breeder, a rumor based on truth. Along with the New York Legislature's antigambling mood, such gossip stopped the bidding at $30,000-a good price for a bad time but not much at all for one of racing's immortals. And so it went.

The Keene horses averaged $5,088. Among them were four Belmont Stakes winners (Colin, Peter Pan, Sweep, Delhi), two future Racing Hall of Fame members (Colin, Peter Pan) and the dam of another (Sysonby), an English Oaks victress (Cap and Bells), two leading sires (Sweep, Celt), and seven of the 19 offspring of Keene's legendary Domino.

Among the buyers that night were Hancocks and Whitneys, men whose purchases would provide foundations for their own future industry dominance. But as Bain's hammer fell for the final time, the name Keene passed into racing history.

Intimidator
"All of life is speculation."-James R. Keene

James Robert Keene was a contradiction. In the realm of high finance, he shared an era with J. P. Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, John D. Rockefeller, and Jay Gould, becoming one of the most feared stock-market manipulators of his or any time. He was a spectacular risk-taker who rode the market to fame, fortune, and bankruptcy-and back again-yet he is now rarely mentioned among the titans of Wall Street history.

Similarly, in modern racing no major stakes event bears the name Keene, though for 30 years he shaped the Sport of Kings as an indefatigable reformer, Jockey Club founder, five-time leading American owner, rebuilder of Belmont Park, and breeder of 110 stakes winners, including six enshrined in the Racing Hall of Fame. The most recent of those is Maskette, the champion filly of 1908 and '09, who entered the Hall on August 6.

Perhaps Keene himself is to blame. By contemporary accounts, he was far less than amiable; one rival called him the "toughest and meanest" of them all, though by Wall Street standards that was not likely. It is true, however, that William Collins Whitney despised him wholeheartedly, as did E. H. Harriman, both of whom had crossed financial swords with Keene and lost. Whitney supposedly entered racing in the 1890s just to challenge his enemy on another playing field.

Grainy photos of Keene depict a wiry, fearsome figure in black Victorian frock coat and derby hat, wearing a pointy beard and possessing a fiercely penetrating glare that could stop a freight train. He was not one to invite familiarity; even his own son called him "Mr. Keene."

Outwardly at least, this iceberg of a man seemed to have had but a single warm chamber in his heart, and that was reserved for racing.

Self-made man

His was the classic American success story: James Keene rose from nothing, a merchant's son growing up in post-Gold Rush California, patching together a living as an editor and teacher while studying law and selling equipment to miners. Early stock investments brought his first monetary success, after which he routinely made and traded away millions on the San Francisco Stock Exchange. Keene mingled during those years with such wealthy racing men as E. J. "Lucky" Baldwin and Governor Leland Stanford, married the former Sara Daingerfield, and probably smiled at the newspaper shenanigans of a young Mark Twain, all while building and rebuilding his financial empire.

Racing was an unsophisticated, rough-and-tumble sport in California when Keene's interest was born. Early in the 1870s, he was drawn into a trivial but now-famous debate with the horse-loving Stanford over whether there was a point in the equine stride at which all four legs were simultaneously aloft. Stanford said yes; Keene disagreed and backed his contention with $25,000.

The wager was unresolved until 1878, when the embryonic art of photography finally evolved to where such a thesis could be tested. Celebrated photographer Eadweard Muybridge set up 24 evenly spaced cameras along the outer railing of Stanford's Palo Alto training track and then ran a string from each shutter across to the inside rail. A horse racing by would break the strings and trigger the shutters. Muybridge later cobbled together the photos and employed his brand new zoopraxiscope projector to create one of the earliest illusions of a moving image-proving the governor right. America went wild over the "flying horse of Palo Alto," and Keene paid up.

Wall Street
"The man who is right six times out of ten will make his fortune."-Keene

Mounting business pressures sent Keene's health into a tailspin around 1876, prompting him to board a private rail car to New York where he would embark upon a medically prescribed sea voyage. He never made it past Wall Street. En route, Keene saw opportunities in railway stocks, bought 10,000 shares of New York Central upon arrival, and somehow managed a quick $20-per-share profit.

Keene was bedazzled by the Street, his instant success there giving him perhaps an overblown sense of personal infallibility. Fantastic tales of legendary speculator Jay Gould elicited from Keene a vow that he would teach the "Wizard of Wall Street" a lesson in finance.

Of course, Gould needed no such lesson. He was wealthier than Croesus and had himself financially ruined friend and foe alike. Keene's supremely silly remark eventually made its way to Gould, whose blood-chilling response was that while Keene had arrived in New York by luxury car, he would send him home in a boxcar.

Despite Gould's menacing presence, Keene plunged in with both feet, displaying an uncanny talent for tweaking and twisting the market to his own purpose. He found he could create a suddenly insatiable demand for previously unsaleable securities by acquiring worthless shares and driving them up "point by point" until people were mad to buy them. "He did not bet on fluctuations-he made them," wrote one awed Wall Street observer.

Keene's reputation grew to heroic proportions. In 1877, violent railroad strikes threatened the entire United States railway system, breeding terror in the securities market. Keene, then 39, stood alone on the exchange floo