The crowd for last Saturday’s $50,000 Joseph Ricci Memorial Trot, billed as New England’s richest harness-racing event, was so dispersed within Scarborough Downs race track that you couldn’t call it a crowd at all. If the Ricci Memorial was their biggest annual race, then Scarborough Downs has attendance problems that could actually make the Portland Pirates feel good about their numbers.
That said, this was my first ever visit there, and I thought the place had a lot to recommend it. They have cheap drinks, food, free admission, ample parking, and earthy farm smells — and it’s really close to Portland. You can gamble and smoke butts. If you can get past the fact that some schmuck rider is whipping the hell out of them (which they can’t appreciate, I don’t care what anybody says), the horses are gorgeous, and fun to watch. The Downs’ huge grandstand, sealed off and apparently unused, has a spooky, empty quality reminiscent of the hotel in The Shining. An abandoned concession building is crumbling in the parking lot, and lots of the racetrack’s denizens seemed like characters from the vignettes that are Tom Waits’ best songs. Overall, that’s my kind of joint. I dug it.
How have I never been there before? Having spent 28 of my 38 years in Maine, all but two around here, it’s not as if I didn’t know about the place. With ubiquitous commercials, impossible-to-miss signs, and a headline-grabbing owner — the late, legendary, and aforementioned Joe Ricci — Scarborough Downs was no secret. It’s just that harness racing isn’t important to average Mainers. I don’t know how big harness racing was in the past, but today, if you aren’t in the horse business, an OTB-junkie, or a waitress in the Downs Club, you don’t care.
That doesn’t mean that you might not have to decide how important harness racing is to you soon — perhaps at the ballot box. Feldco Development Corp., the firm that built Scarborough’s shiny new Cabella’s Store, revealed plans last week for a proposed development at the Downs which included a racino, an idea rejected by Scarborough voters in 2003.
The referendum petition drives, the advertising, and all of the annoying blather on both sides of the contentious gambling issue will soon return, so I wanted to go see Scarborough Downs before the people with plans for it began claiming that the track, and Maine’s harness racing industry, will fold without the addition of slots. That the track might close seems plausible, and why isn’t that okay? Extinction is natural. If the public doesn’t want to support harness racing, why should that one, small industry be propped up with changes in the gambling laws? Should Old Orchard Beach have let the Maine Guides install slots or video poker in the ballpark to keep the team from leaving in the 1990s? People in this town used to love the Sportsman’s Grill. When that long-standing restaurant’s fortunes changed, should they have been allowed to run a casino in the back to keep the doors open?
Ultimately, that seems silly to me, but what do I know? It’s an issue for the voters, the Legislature, and Governor Baldacci, Maine’s capo di tutti capi of scratch tickets, to decide.
Scarborough Downs’ 500 acres are far too wide-open and too devoid of current customers to remain as is. Its eventual evolution into something less agricultural is all but inevitable, so take my advice. No matter how you feel about racinos, catch a couple of races as soon as you can. See it before it changes forever. You’ll be amazed at its pitch-perfect combination of bucolic scenery and seediness.
