Columnist Ralph Siraco: Historic Santa Anita welcomes a new era

Ralph Siraco

Monday, Sept. 27, 1999 | 10:09 a.m.

Ralph Siraco's horse racing column appears Monday, and his Southern California selections run Tuesday through Friday on the scoreboard page. Write to him c/o Las Vegas Sun, 800 S. Valley View Blvd., Las Vegas, NV 89107.

When racing resumes Wednesday in Southern California with the opening of the Oak Tree meeting at Santa Anita, a new era at the picturesque Arcadia racing emporium will begin.

The historic facility is getting a millennium make-over, both cosmetically and operationally.

Since its inaugural meeting on Christmas Day 1934, the track has seen upgrades in technology, multi-staged expansions and numerous coats of its famous green and cream-colored paint, but nothing as dramatic or extensive as the transformation that is now taking place at the "Great Race Place."

The original Santa Anita opened in 1907, a few miles from where the new track sits today, on the sprawling estate of E.J. "Lucky" Baldwin. The Indiana native, who was an early California pioneer, purchased his expansive spread at the foot of the San Gabriel Mountain range for $200,000 cash in 1875 and realized his dream racetrack just two years before his death. One year after that wagering was outlawed in the Golden State.

When betting on the sport was again legalized in 1933 it was Dr. Charles H. Strub who carried on the tradition of Santa Anita. "Doc Strub," a dentist by trade, recruited filmmaker Hal Roach to become the new track's first president.

The return of the sport of kings to Southern California was an overwhelming success as 30,777 attended the races on that opening Christmas Tuesday and wagered $258,961 on the eight-race card.

Over the years Santa Anita has been a racing innovator. It held the first $100,000 handicap race in the sport's history that became the world's first guaranteed $1 million added-money event -- the Santa Anita Handicap.

For decades Santa Anita has been the workplace of many of the sport's superstars and legends. Fifty-nine-year-old jockey John Longden rode George Royal to win the 1966 San Juan Capistrano Handicap in his final ride to retire the world's winningest rider with 6,032 career wins. Twenty-four years later, jockey Bill Shoemaker made his final ride at the same Santa Anita, and although he did not win his last ride on that Feb. 3, 1990, afternoon, Shoemaker had long since surpassed Longden as the sport's winningest jockey with 8,833 victories.

The track that has been the playground for many Hollywood luminaries, political hotshots and movers and shakers through the years was under the control and guidance of the Strub family until early this year, when auto parts-manufacturing magnate Frank Stronach purchase the Southern California landmark.

The 66-year-old industrialist is an avid racing fan and owns a substantial stable of thoroughbreds that included last year's Breeders' Cup Classic winner Awesome Again.

Stronach is no country-clubber and is not part of the elitist establishment. Often characterized as temperamental, moody and demanding, the Austrian-born self-made billionaire is a visionary and has definite plans to bring the track back to its glory days wrapped in a new package with a new attitude for the next century. And he has brought a new, bright young team of administrators with him.

He knows full well that with change, especially in a sport that is based on tradition, there will be some who view the new era as destructive. Stronach is betting they are wrong.

Stronach has a passion for the sport and a penchant for good business -- a combination that many track owners do not possess -- and that combination may be just the answer for the Southern California racing terrain.

Santa Anita is getting more than a new paint job and a repaved parking lot. It is getting a new lease on life.

If Stronach does for Santa Anita what he has done for the auto parts industry, then he will put smiles on the faces of fans, players and horsemen while rekindling the spirits of Doc Strub and E.J. "Lucky" Baldwin. Let the new era begin.