Amid Santa Anita's threat to sell or close, California Horse Racing Board approves Pleasanton race dates

"The letter bothers me," Castellanos said. "I'm not too kind about bullies but if that's the way you want it to seem then that's the way it is. … You are trying to put the burden on the CHRB and that's not our responsibility. We don't close tracks. … But it's sad to say with a letter like that, it comes across 'If you don't do it my way, I'm going to take my ball and leave.' That's not cool.

"Now we have the north against the south and I received a lot of calls. I'm not upset because of the calls, I'm upset because I don't do well with bullies. … The bottom line is we need to work together. We need to figure out how to keep racing in California. Not just Northern, not just Southern, but in California. There is no reason to cannibalize each other. Your letter, to me, was crap. It shouldn't have been done. But that's the way you chose to play the game and we'll go from there."

Clearly, the strategy by Santa Anita didn't work. The vote was expected to be very close, not unanimous. But that was before the letter.

By the time Bill Nader, executive director of the Thoroughbred Owners of California, gave a presentation on why there should be one circuit, not two, the fight was over and most on the board already had made up their minds.

Alan Balch, executive director of the California Thoroughbred Trainers, put the cherry on top by calling out the hypocrisy of Santa Anita demanding to see financial documents of the Northern California group while never disclosing its own records and offering conflicting reports of its profitability.

"We need a chance to see what will happen in Northern California," Balch said.

In Fravel's "now-infamous letter," as he called it, he said the track has had operating losses in excess of $31 million in the last five years. He also said the track has invested $32 million in big capital projects to include a Tapeta training track, a new turf chute and environmental projects.

The main reason for Santa Anita's opposition to the Northern California proposal is legislation that it helped usher through at the end of last year that stipulated if there is no live racing in Northern California, outside of the summer fair circuit, all simulcast revenue from the north would go to the south, to Santa Anita, Del Mar and Los Alamitos.

Now the question is if Santa Anita will follow through on its threat to close or sell the track. The land the track sits on could be worth more than $1 billion if developed. And that may be the biggest factor of all.