Flatter: What really is next for the home of the Preakness?

Baltimore

One of the little-known traditions of Preakness week is the stream of morning tours full of schoolkids getting a look at the backside stable area at Pimlico.

“This is the second oldest horse race in America,” one tour guide was heard telling a group of about 15 or 20 young faces. “The Kentucky Derby, of course, is the oldest.”

I flashed immediately to Clark Griswold saying, “Perhaps you don’t want to see the second-largest ball of twine on earth, which is only four short hours away.”

For the children of the city of Baltimore, this might have been their first look at horses. For the first- and second- and third-graders coming in from the nearby countryside, they have been there and done that. This is, after all, horse country.

And this is Pimlico, a place that does not change. It rots. The boys and girls who dutifully and politely stood and watched and listened as they got out of the classroom and took one small step toward their summer vacations saw an old racetrack that has not been updated in a big way since the old clubhouse burned down 58 years ago next month.

The Pimlico the youngsters saw is the same one their grandparents saw when they took their own tours and saw the old barns when they were new and when the word youngsters did not sound as yesteryear as it does now.

A horse is a horse, of course, of course, a phrase that also creaks from a zillion years ago. They remain the big draw, even if they are not here anymore in numbers that made Maryland breeding such a big industry.

The statistics are alarming.

The Jockey Club tells us that there were 567 mares bred in Maryland to 25 Thoroughbred stallions. In 1991 it was 2,814 to 198. If I really want to be depressed, I could go in the press-box library at Pimlico and open up an old American Racing Manual to see what the totals were when the clubhouse burned down.

Maryland is the nation’s sixth-largest state for breeding racehorses. It is a microcosm of the whole country. Last year across the U.S. there were 26,555 mares bred to 970 stallions. In 1991 it was 64,124 to 6,696. The average stud book now carries the names of 27.4 mares. A third of a century ago it was 9.6.

Before this turns into a debate over mare caps, let this be a signpost first about where the elected legislature decided to invest $400 million in state bonds. When Maryland governor Wes Moore signed the bill last Thursday, it represented the latest promise to rebuild Pimlico for the first time since the new clubhouse was christened next to the old one in 1960.

And so the state rolls in, paying the princely sum of one American dollar to take Pimlico off The Stronach Group’s hands. Even with that, we have heard this week that there still will be one more Preakness at Pimlico next year. Then it will be moved for a year or two or more to Laurel Park, a not-as-rotting relic about halfway between Baltimore and Washington that presumably will be sold out of existence once the new Pimlico is opened.

Stronach will maintain a grip on the Preakness brand, but only for two more years. As Michael A. Fletcher pointed out this week in a wonderfully thorough, 2,500-word story for ESPN, that translates to about $10 million that will be the parting gift to the company also known as 1/ST. A 2.5 percent skim off the top is some nice name, image and likeness money. Then it lands in the hands of a state-authorized non-profit. Yeah, non-profit seems about right.

Comparisons have been made between the new Maryland racing structure and the New York Racing Association, which in its current form righted itself out of bankruptcy 16 years ago. It seems to be doing quite well, thank you.

The biggest difference between NYRA and the verbosely named Maryland Thoroughbred Racetrack Operating Authority is casino money. Resorts World at Aqueduct has been pouring dollars into New York racing for 13 years. There is no such direct conduit for Maryland, even though there was every opportunity to make that happen. Perhaps a more apt comparison for this point would be Illinois and the needless decline and fall of Arlington Park.

If the money really is spent this time to replace Pimlico the way it was not four years ago, then Maryland will be pushing $400 million worth of those bond chips across the table on a big bet that feels like a desperation Pick 5 with barely enough money to single each leg.

First, a bulldozer actually has to show up at Old Hilltop. Then the cranes. Then someone has to sell the state some land for a training center somewhere still to be determined. No worries there, right?

Then these civic leaders who have talked a good game about their investment in racing also have to placate a skeptical Park Heights neighborhood that has been promised a piece of the action as it stands on the brink of gentrification. Want another comparison? Ask longtime residents in the South Bronx what kind of improvements they saw when not one but two new Yankee Stadiums were built there.

Finally, there has to be a healthy game to bring back when that new Pimlico reopens. An 80 percent plunge in Maryland Thoroughbred breeding during the past three decades is not exactly a positive investment indicator.

Governor Moore is a Maryland native who grew up in New York City, became a Rhodes scholar, an Afghanistan war veteran, a second-generation TV journalist, a business and charity executive and now the first Black governor of the state where he was born. He is accomplished. And his résumé says loudly and clearly that he is smart enough to know what a gamble this is.

One cannot help but wonder just what kind of Pimlico that unborn school children may be touring in, say, 10 years. When I was a kid we had tours, too. A couple times we went to see how newspapers were made.

Here is hoping Pimlico has a better future than that.

Ron Flatter’s column appears Friday mornings at Horse Racing Nation. Comments below are welcomed, encouraged and may be used in the feedback segment of the Ron Flatter Racing Pod, which also is posted every Friday.