Horse Whispers

The national anthem plays before the first race at Hollywood Park and everyone in the “study hall” -- a dank, cavernous area beneath the grandstand -- gets up. The guys want to show respect, but somewhere around “the twilight’s last gleaming,” more than a few of them cannot help glancing at their racing charts, scribbling quick notes.

The study hall is a hangout for avid players who bet non-stop on the live races as well as telecasts from other tracks that flicker across banks of monitors overhead. Other than “The Star-Spangled Banner,” about the only thing that distracts them from the horses are rumors that a developer might buy Hollywood Park and raze it to build a shopping mall or housing tract.

“Oh yeah,” Al Woskoff says. “We talk about it.”

A speculative crowd by nature, the regulars have their pet theories, tidbits of information gleaned from the grapevine. They have heard rumors of a sale for years, but recent news makes them suspect that something is imminent.

Woskoff, an 82-year-old retiree, distinguishable by his bright pink cap, comes here at least three days a week, if not five. “A degenerate gambler,” he says with a smile. Nearby, Joseph Colopilo chats with buddies and says it’s like family.

“This is all I do,” the 69-year-old apartment manager explains. “Wife died. I’m not very good at poker.”

Some of the diehards have been coming to Hollywood Park since just after World War II. Shutting the place down would be tantamount to kicking them out of their homes. So the question is: Why don’t they seem terribly worried?

It was last March that ownership announced an impending decision. Churchill Downs Inc., which took over in 1999, has been disappointed with the track’s financial performance and knows that the 240-acre tract near the San Diego Freeway in Inglewood holds significant real estate value.

A Northern California developer, Stockbridge Capital Partners, has emerged as a leading suitor with an acquisition bid of $275 million, the Los Angeles Business Journal reported last month. Hollywood Park officials declined to comment, but sources close to management said an announcement could come as soon as next week.

Bettors aren’t the only ones with something at stake. Employees talk daily about the future of their jobs and the horsemen are just as concerned.

“We’re all trying to guess what will happen,” trainer Mike Mitchell says.

To some degree, years of uncertainty have desensitized the Hollywood Park denizens. They also figure that if new owners are intent on developing the land, it probably will not be a quick demise.

Stockbridge purchased Bay Meadows in San Mateo about four years ago. Though the company had announced plans to replace the track with residential and commercial development, the horses are still running there.

Besides, when old-timers muse about losing Hollywood Park at some hazy point in the distance, they inevitably grumble that the place isn’t what it used to be.

Film industry money -- a group of investors that included executive Jack L. Warner of Warner Brothers studio, Al Jolson and Edward G. Robinson -- financed the track in 1938. By the late 1940s, movie stars were a fixture on race days.

In his book, “Hollywood Park: From Seabiscuit to Pincay,” Biff Lowry writes that the studios used to send over famous actors and actresses in couples to make the gossip columns. Randolph Scott and Dorothy Lamour. Jimmy Stewart and Olivia de Havilland. Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.

The racing was every bit as glitzy. This was where Seabiscuit won the inaugural Gold Cup, Citation became racing’s first million-dollar winner and Native Diver dominated. Jockeys Johnny Longden, Bill Shoemaker and Laffit Pincay rode here.

Dick Warren, who started as an usher at Hollywood Park in 1948, recalls the grandstands were packed most every day, with crowds of more than 50,000 for big races.

As recently as the mid-1980s, buses pulled into the parking lot every morning, bringing fans from across Southern and Central California.

Warren tells stories of the old days while standing at the entrance to the reserve boxes. He wears a green blazer, his white hair combed neatly back. He has welcomed maybe a dozen customers into his section on a Thursday afternoon, and there is only a smattering of fans in the grandstand and along the apron.

These days, the track draws 4,000 or so on a weekday. Ten thousand is a good crowd on a normal weekend.

“Nothing comes close to the way it used to be,” Warren says.

Thoroughbred racing hit hard times in the 1990s, withered by competition from casino gambling and offshore bookmakers. The increase in off-site and Internet betting has given an aging demographic the option of playing the horses without coming to the track.

So Hollywood Park’s halcyon days are but a memory, as dated as the black-and-white photos of Jack Lemmon and Cary Grant in a hallway behind the grandstand. The most vibrant connection to the past are flamingos that stand at water’s edge in the lush, green infield.

“Look at that,” says Charles Smith, sitting at a pub that overlooks the track, a newspaper spread across the bar in front of him. “The lakes and the flowers ... where else do you get that? This place should be an historical landmark.”

Smith is a longshot player, trying to decide on a pick three wager, a Dodger cap turned backward as he hunkers over his choices. To him, being a horse player means more than betting.

“I like the people,” he says. “You come out here and the people know you by name and know you have the same passion as them.”

A few stools down, James Johnson nods in agreement. The 41-year-old man likes the draft beer and the fact that he knows the bartenders by name.

“Basically, it’s socializing,” he says. “We sit here, hang out, talk.”

All of that would be lost if Hollywood Park closes. But there is a reason that none of the regulars are panicking: For all their personal history at the track, all the friendships they have forged, they are first and foremost gamblers.

Even Smith, who talks about the fraternity at Hollywood Park, figures he could switch to Santa Anita. “Wherever they have races,” he says.

Employees such as Warren and Drew Pflueger, who sells admission to the clubhouse, say they could either retire or find work at other Southern California tracks.

The horsemen could move on too. Mitchell has already shipped part of his stable to Gulfstream Park in Florida.

“Oh, I love the tradition and everything at Hollywood Park,” Mitchell says. “But it sure sounds like we’re going to lose it.”

Down in the study hall, 88-year-old Byron Matthews says he could start making the drive from his West Los Angeles home to Los Alamitos.

Matthews looks the part of an old-time player, wearing a burgundy jacket and a straw cowboy hat. He prides himself on being able to see something special in a horse, something in the carriage of the jockey.

“I’m a hunch player,” he says.

Though his history with Hollywood Park goes way back -- he has been coming here a few days a week since 1946 -- he insists he can adjust to any change.

“I like it here,” he says. “But I’m really not that sentimental about it.”

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Times staff writer Greg Johnson contributed to this report.