Flatter: What do we make of the closing of Golden Gate Fields?

The 140 acres of land about 37.9 degrees north of the equatorand 122.3 degrees west of the prime meridian has been used at various times inthe last 200 years as a commercial public ranch, a waystation for cattle intendedfor slaughter, a dynamite factory that had one too many accidents, a mud bedfor itinerant clammers, a wartime parking place for battleships and, for mostof the past 82 years, running racehorses.

Whither Golden Gate Fields, which will be buried in its ownrubble sometime after it hosts its last race Sunday, Dec. 10, around the sametime as the 49ers are playing the Seahawks way down near the other end of SanFrancisco Bay. Hopefully, the citizens will take notice.

Dateline Albany, Calif. Or is it Berkeley? That all depends.The racetrack, the actual ovals made of verdant grass and that polymerconcoction known as Tapeta, is contained entirely in Albany. The tale goesthat the city once known as Ocean View split off on its own after somegun-toting locals got fed up with Berkeley dumping its garbage in their yards.Howdy, neighbor.

Most of the horses live in Berkeley. If the Google Maps appis correct, the line between the cities cuts a path that separates the track tothe north from the stable area to the south. Actually, there appear to be fouror five barns where the line goes through the stalls. Not sure if those few horseson the north side get a break on rent for being in Albany, but they should.

That will be a moot point in, what, 4 1/2 months? Only 142shopping days until The Stronach Group tells the last person out to shut offthe lights and lock up. The wrecking ball will not be far behind. Or perhapssome of that 19th-century dynamite, for old time bomb’s sake.

The ruing of another racetrack being shut down carries withit wistful looks back at glorious moments that cannot be recaptured. Citationlosing to Noor in 1950. John Henry’s course record in 1984. The domination ofHollendorfer and Baze, for better or worse. Silky Sullivan and Lost in the Fogthrived at Golden Gate, and they were buried there. Too bad it feels like theirmemories have a more secure place than their remains.

Racetracks truly become figurative graveyards now. The humanand equine beings who carved their legacy are latter-day martyrs. Thinkingabout them, we collectively grow more and more bitter about corporatebulldozing and callous bean counting. There is nothing worse than countingcallous beans.

We gather with our pitchforks and torches just as we did afterChurchill Downs Inc. had greased the wheels for the closing of Hollywood Parkand after it dirtied its hands with its cold-shouldered shutdown of ArlingtonPark and, to a lesser degree, with the fade-out of the artist formerly known asCalder. We will cast aspersions and epithets at the New York Racing Associationwhen, sometime this decade, it does away with Aqueduct, that musty, old jointthat still has good bones.

Right now our anger is directed at The Stronach Group,a.k.a. 1/ST, f.k.a. Magna. By any name it is the new ogre in town. Its hastilywritten press release was dispatched Sunday afternoon, about 90 minutes afterthe Los Angeles Times broke the news about the impeding fall of GoldenGate. Management originally had planned to make its statement a day later.

I have it on good authority that one Stronach executive was especiallyupset that the Times scoop upstaged the news release. Within earshot ofhis confederates, he supposedly barked some caustic feelings about the paperdaring to independently divulge the story before management could break the badnews to its employees and stakeholders. Really? Like this was not in the worksfor a while? Yeah, better to procrastinate and kill the messenger than to finishdoing your job.

To be fair, these cannot be joyous times for the minions whocarry the water for racetracks’ uppermost management. There are plenty ofhigh-ranking professionals who got into the business for the love of the game. Sadlythey are becoming outnumbered by MBAs and their ilk who flex their own brand ofanalytics. Make that analytic$.

The once-pristine palaces that were shrines to thrillingmoments and newfound riches and the confetti of losing tickets turn intorotting monuments emblematic of soaring takeout, bloated rebates for computerplayers, crumbling incentives for horsemen, eroding foal crops and the cannibalizationof betting dollars that have wandered to less homework-intensive forms ofgambling.

As with other intended closings of racetracks, the use-bydate on Golden Gate Fields has stoked ambition. The California Association ofRacing Fairs wants to move maybe 80 percent of the Albany-Berkeley racing datesto Sacramento, where it hopes to raise money for the building of a turf course.Noble as that sounds, it feels about as likely as the California League’s ModestoNuts moving into the American League to replace the Oakland A’s.

Oh, yes. The A’s. I swear that scent wafting from the BayArea is that of a baseball team looking for a new home and finding obstacles inLas Vegas. It smells like that mismanaged ballclub could buy the Golden GateFields real estate either for a new stadium or the same sort of leverage theChicago Bears are using with the land beneath the rubble at Arlington Park.

Say, weren’t those other Bears, the Golden ones from theUniversity of California, kicking the tires a few years ago on the idea ofbuilding a basketball arena on that property? UC Berkeley-Albany has a certainring to it.

Whatever comes of that waterfront property, it will be yetanother racecourse that bites the dust, almost literally alongside Bay Meadowsand Tanforan before that.

How many more tracks must become shopping malls or housingdevelopments or someone else’s stadiums before a would-be hero rides in on a whitehorse, or a bay or chestnut, to rescue this sport?

There is one answer, odious though it may be. If the SaudiArabia government can write a big check to buy professional golf in NorthAmerica, who is to say it would not do so with horse racing, a sport in whichit at least indirectly has had a longer-term investment?

Let’s see. Churchill stock closed Thursday at $131.47, downfrom its all-time high of $149.08 during Derby week. With nearly 75 million outstandingshares, a controlling interest in that company could cost about $5 billion.

That is a lot more than the $2 billion it reportedly cost tobuild LIV Golf and merge it with the PGA Tour. But Riyadh has about $700billion in that Public Investment Fund.