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

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

Whither Golden Gate Fields, which will be buried in its own rubble sometime after it hosts its last race Sunday, Dec. 10, around the same time as the 49ers are playing the Seahawks way down near the other end of San Francisco 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 polymer concoction known as Tapeta, is contained entirely in Albany. The tale goes that the city once known as Ocean View split off on its own after some gun-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 app is correct, the line between the cities cuts a path that separates the track to the north from the stable area to the south. Actually, there appear to be four or five barns where the line goes through the stalls. Not sure if those few horses on 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 142 shopping days until The Stronach Group tells the last person out to shut off the lights and lock up. The wrecking ball will not be far behind. Or perhaps some of that 19th-century dynamite, for old time bomb’s sake.

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

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

We gather with our pitchforks and torches just as we did after Churchill Downs Inc. had greased the wheels for the closing of Hollywood Park and after it dirtied its hands with its cold-shouldered shutdown of Arlington Park and, to a lesser degree, with the fade-out of the artist formerly known as Calder. We will cast aspersions and epithets at the New York Racing Association when, sometime this decade, it does away with Aqueduct, that musty, old joint that 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 hastily written press release was dispatched Sunday afternoon, about 90 minutes after the Los Angeles Times broke the news about the impending fall of Golden Gate. Management originally had planned to make its statement a day later.

I have it on good authority that one Stronach executive was especially upset that the Times scoop upstaged the news release. Within earshot of his confederates, he supposedly barked some caustic feelings about the paper daring to independently divulge the story before management could break the bad news to its employees and stakeholders. Really? Like this was not in the works for a while? Yeah, better to procrastinate and kill the messenger than to finish doing your job.

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

The once-pristine palaces that were shrines to thrilling moments and newfound riches and the confetti of losing tickets turn into rotting monuments emblematic of soaring takeout, bloated rebates for computer players, crumbling incentives for horsemen, eroding foal crops and the cannibalization of betting dollars that have wandered to less homework-intensive forms of gambling.

As with other intended closings of racetracks, the use-by date on Golden Gate Fields has stoked ambition. The California Association of Racing Fairs wants to move maybe 80 percent of the Albany-Berkeley racing dates to 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 Modesto Nuts moving into the American League to replace the Oakland A’s.

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

Say, weren’t those other Bears, the Golden ones from the University of California, kicking the tires a few years ago on the idea of building a basketball arena on that frontage? UC Berkeley-Albany has a certain ring to it.

Whatever comes of that waterfront property, it will be yet another racecourse that bites the dust, almost literally alongside Bay Meadows and Tanforan before that.

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

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

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

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

Just sayin’.