The Canadian Sportsman

Your comments were very interesting.I hope the Big M is sold to people who know how to manage a track. I think it will be a long time before the voters approve casino betting outside of Atlantic City but it's worth a gamble for the right investors. The place definitly needs better management.
Thanks for sending me your thoughts.

~ Ray Brienza

Dave,
You are so right. Just a couple of points.
(1)I would include the states of New York and Conneciticut as well as Delaware and Pennsylvania as drawing from Atlantic City.
(2)You say "money is blood to politicians". You are so right, yet here we have policticians likely squandering billions of dollars to neighboring states which could easily come into cash strapped New Jersey. Tim Rooney had to have a great night of sleep last evening.
Perhaps I've seen too many politicians in action and read too many novels. I see this whole thing as one plot.
What I see New Jersey doing is the following.
(1)Shut down the Meadowlands(and perhaps also Monmouth), thus destroying all horse racing and likely all agricultural entities related to breeding in the state.
(2) Once horse racing has been destroyed - THEN they open the area to gaming, thus making significant money for the casinos and the state. Of course the racing industry is out of the picture and there is one less entity to share the wealth with.
I absolutely believe that this is the plan and expect it to happen within the next five years.
Murray Brown
PS-If you want to share this or print it in the magazine, I would have no objection.

~ Murray Brown

Dave,

Trying to decide whether to enter your horse in a $10,000 or $12,500 claimer is a more difficult decision than the one faced in New Jersey.

As you appropriately point out, the Governor (and the elected officials) want what they believe is best for New Jersey, i.e., salvation of Atlantic City. Why? Because the owners of the establishments there pour kazillion of dollars into campaign funds.

Of course, The Meadowlands not only needs slots (even a full scale casion of two) but it also makes far too much sense, given its location, to get them from those elected officials who could care less about grey matter, since they have so litle of it at their disposal.

Good job, as usual, but I believe you -- like the harness industry in New Jersey -- is 'whistlin' in the wind.'

By the way, have you read the rave reviews about Monmouth's shortened meeting and humongous purses? Geepers, too bad no one writing in this industry ever advanced that idea, unless, of course, you include yours truly who has been preaching it for almost the last two decades.

Keep up the good fight.

Stan Gutkowski

~ stan gutkowski

David,

New Jersey is a very weird place where very weird things happen.

Sadly, despite its weirdness and joke target-ability, New Jersey is also a dreadfully uninteresting place that somehow manages to inspire interest. Car accidents have that same ability.

No writer has ever had an easier time thinking up a title for a book than the man who penned the popular coffee table book, "Weird New Jersey."

The Meadowlands Racetrack was not spared this weirdness and it all began on the very first night.

Back in September of 1976, then Governor Brendan Byrne tried to make a speech as he cut the ribbon crossing the finish line. Unfortunately for Byrne, he was booed into oblivion and the speech never came off as planned. Byrne barely managed to cut the ribbon before his people hustled him away from the venomous crowd.

Seems that Governor Byrne ran for office on a strict platform of "No State Income Tax" but as soon as his victory streamers stopped falling on election night, he initialized one of the most expensive state income taxes in the nation -- but wait, it gets weirder.

Despite the hatred spewed at him by 50,000+ opening nighters, Byrne was reelected to a second term.

Could the reason be that the people who go to the races, just happen to be representative of the people who don't vote? No, that would be too easy an explanation and nothing that happens in New Jersey can be explained easily -- but I'll try.

What if the answer is that weird New Jerseyans have elected a governor who is perhaps not corrupt and is doing exactly what he promised to do during his campaign? Was anybody listening? Sure they were, but they were not the kind of people who care about harness racing.

You want an honest politician? Well maybe you just got one. It's an old case of be careful what you wish for because prior to the election, Chris Christie made no secret of the fact that he thought horse racing was a bad bleed.

You want lower property taxes? Okay, where does the money come from? You want lower insurance rates? Show me the money!

Admittedly there is a bias and we who post on this page are certainly not going to soapbox in favour of dumping The Meadowlands, but the truth is that your garden variety, weird New Jerseyans do not care about harness racing and they've been proving that more and more for over a decade. They proved it by not going to the track.

New Jerseyans simply aren't interested in the sport that their state and The Meadowlands practically put on the map -- ergo, weird New Jersey.

If the wrecking ball hits the grandstand the only thing you'll still be able to wager on is that plenty of people will say in passing, "Isn't that the place where they used to have the horses with the wheels?"

The reason they're not interested is because they don't know about it or what little they do know is dipped in tales of horse doping and race fixing.

Scandals in Atlantic City are corporate things and the average person neither reads about these incidents nor do they care about them. Nobody has ever uncovered a rigged roulette wheel or a hot set of dice down there -- harness racing can't make the same claim.

Sure there are breeders and training facilities that have been supporting the state's agriculture for nearly a century, but we all have cars now, and to claim racehorses as an agricultural commodity seems very disingenuous.

A 300 acre racehorse farm doesn't contribute anywhere near as much in tax dollars as would the 300 uber-houses that could be built there, and a lot of these sanctimonious horsemen who bemoan the fall of the farm, are themselves guilty of selling off land to developers for big money.

The truth hurts and the simple fact is that the average person not only doesn't care about harness racing in New Jersey, they tragically don't even know what it is despite the fact that it's their own unique brand -- something they should have clung to. But of course that would have required deep thinking and foresighted leadership. There never was any of that in New Jersey despite claims to the contrary.

Certain people just picked and picked and picked until the bones were dry. Now there aren't even any bones.

If the Leaning Tower of Pisa had the misfortune of being in East Rutherford, weird New Jerseyans would have really enjoyed watching it lean for a few years but then they'd eventually get bored and yearn for the real excitement -- the day when it would finally fall.

A governor's job is the toughest and most unlovable job of any in politics and despite the fact that we all love harness racing, the truth is that pretty much everyone else does not.

Now there's talk of selling The Meadowlands for $1.00 to the very same people who should have shown leadership 34 years ago. Ah, weird New Jersey.

David Mattia

~ David Mattia

Let me make this easy for Governor Christie: The Meadows has slots thriving, Harrah's Chester has slots thriving, Poconos has slots thriving,Dover Downs has slots thriving, Yonkers has slots thriving. Rosecroft no slots dead. Tracks in Michigan no slots dying. Tracks in Ohio no slots dying. See any pattern here Mr Governor?

~ Howard Gluck

Murray, Don't forget the real estate developers that must be itching to put shovels in the ground of all those horse farms. The only green space that matters to this crew is what's found on dollar bills.

~ Steve Katz

Say what you want but a bit more foresight could have been displayed by those using the Jersey facilities for training purposes while primarily entering at Chester, Yonkers and Pocono.

What it did was dilute the Meadowlands of the power packed weekend cards that used to pack the house on Fridays and Saturdays.

In that they figured to be under considerable scrutiny by those members of the Hansen report team it would appear that contributing to what in effect was the emasculation of The Meadowlands played right into the hands of those who have other agendas for The Meadowlands Racetrack.

~ Bob Marks