Aug 7, 2008

End of an era

Racing at Bay Meadows nears finish line

By Tim Simmers / Bay Area News Group

The venerable Bay Meadows Race Track, which drove modern horse racing in California with many innovations and forever changed the city of San Mateo, has begun its final days of horse racing.

A 10-day meet coinciding with the San Mateo County Fair kicked off Wednesday and runs through Aug. 17. The fair itself begins Friday.

After several years of planning, redevelopment of the 73-year-old venue is poised to begin by the end of the year. The final day at Bay Meadows will close the book on more than seven decades of continuous thoroughbred racing.

"The track was the only major sports venue on the Peninsula, and it was a special place where people went out to see their favorite horses,'' said Larry Stumes, perhaps the Bay Area's most respected horse racing scribe.

For Stumes and other racing fanatics, watching thoroughbred horses galloping on the hallowed grounds of Bay Meadows was something more than a spectator sport.

It was a ritual, a way of life.

Parents and grandparents took their children and grandchildren to watch the horses walk before jockeys mounted them. Some folks even took the kids to the betting windows to place their first bets. Their money down, they walked up into the grandstand and beheld the historic oval itself.

Those memories won't go away, but what remains of the place that inspired them will soon be demolished, making room for progress in the form of retail, housing and commercial development. Now that the track is set to be torn down, the physical reminders of many historical moments - such as Seabiscuit winning the Bay Meadows Handicap for two straight years in 1937 and 1938 - will be lost.

Seabiscuit's two victories at Bay Meadows came at the beginning of his rise to national stardom. The bent-legged thoroughbred went on to inspire struggling working people throughout America during the Great Depression.

Seabiscuit's triumph and other glorious moments at Bay Meadows would never have happened without William Kyne.

Born in San Francisco's "South of the Slot" area, now known as South of Market, Kyne had ambitions of becoming a priest. Instead, his father's sudden death while working as a longshoreman meant Kyne had to work to support his family. His toil led him to the more earthly pursuit of horse racing and gambling.

Since thoroughbred racing was illegal at the time in California, Kyne's passion for racing took him as far north as Montana and as far south as Tijuana, but he ultimately realized his dream in California.

He successfully lobbied the state Legislature to allow horse racing and pari-mutuel betting. He promised lawmakers up to $1 million in state taxes from gambling. Horse racing eventually brought in millions of dollars a year in state money, booming from the 1940s to the 1970s.

Many called Kyne a fool for establishing Bay Meadows in San Mateo and turning his back on the lucrative Los Angeles market. But to his critics, Kyne always replied, "I'm happy with Bay Meadows and I'm home in San Francisco."

Kyne built the famous track on the site of the old Curtis-Wright Airport, developing 105 acres of land to house the grandstand, the main track and parking lot. He also developed more than 70 adjacent acres to sculpt a training track and stable area. He christened the site Bay Meadows because it was once a meadow and it sat close to the Bay.

Bay Meadows was embraced in San Mateo, as city founders realized the community would benefit from the tax revenue and gain national recognition. An inaugural dinner was held at the Ben Franklin Hotel in downtown San Mateo, and many dignitaries came to celebrate the start of racing.

Opening day arrived on Nov. 3, 1934. A special train brought customers in from Los Angeles. Newspapers reported that as many as 25,000 turned out for the big event.

The horse racing business boomed in San Mateo until the United States entered World War II, which forced race tracks all over the country to close. But Kyne negotiated permission to operate the track in order to benefit the war effort, arranging to donate 92 percent of the profits to support the military campaign.

Business was steady throughout the war years and boomed once again in the late 1940s. Later, the track became a magnet for major stars like Bing Crosby, Clark Gable and Joe DiMaggio.

It also made its mark as a laboratory for the introduction of technology into horse racing. Bay Meadows was the first track to have photo finishes, and it also sported the first electronic tote board. Bay Meadows racing enthusiasts also witnessed the first electronic starting gate and the debut of night racing.

Kyne ushered in these changes with characteristic showmanship. When he died in 1956, his wife Dorothy assumed the role of general manager for several years before leaving the stewardship of the track to other managers.

Though the track's glory years undoubtably came on Kyne's watch, some of the bigger controversies at Bay Meadows also occurred during his reign.

Back in the early 1940s, a number of the track's jockeys were linked to a large-scale gambling ring that was accused of rigging races. Another controversy surfaced in the late '40s, when the track tried to expand an airport that had been operating on the property.

The city council held a raucous meeting in 1949 to address the issue. Some 600 people came to debate the expansion, which the city rejected. The airport evenutally ceased operations. But the uproar over the airport and the gambling scandal that rocked the track were minor stumbles during decades of spirited racing, runaway business and the track's evolving legend.

The Southern California racing season gradually grew longer as racing there became more profitable. By the 1970s, the heart of the state's thoroughbred racing industry had shifted to the Los Angeles market.
In the early 1980s, an effort to bolster horse racing in Northern California led some businessmen to propose moving Bay Meadows across the bridge to Hayward. The plan fizzled, however, and the track hobbled through the decade, still turning a profit but now a shadow of its former self.

The advent of simulcast, or off-track, betting in the mid-1980s helped boost sagging revenue but reduced the crowds even further.

"Simulcast has been a savior, but it also hastened the demise of tracks like Bay Meadows, because attendance continued to fall," said Morton Cathrow, a Bay Area horse racing historian.

Eventually, the California Jockey Club sold the entire property to Paine Webber and Co., which spent $20 million in 1998 to build prefabricated barns in the Bay Meadows infield in order to commercially develop what was once the track's backstretch.

The city of San Mateo has worked with residents and developers for the better part of a decade to shape the transformation of the track and build popular support for remaking a local landmark into a veritable mini-city.

As the track enters into its final two weeks of racing, the sun is finally setting over the grandstand and long shadows are blanketing what remains of the legendary dirt oval.

For Robert "Boots" O'Neil, 84, the oldest living para-mutuel betting clerk at the track, it's something worth mourning.

"This place has had a great run, but I still fell terrible about it closing," O'Neill said. "When the death knell hits and they tear it down, I'm not going to be around to watch it. That would be like watching your uncle die."



Bay Area News Group staff writer Michael Manekin contributed to this report.