Beneath The Super Bowl’s Turf: The Ghosts of Hollywood Park

Just north of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, home of Sunday’s Super Bowl LVI, a roadway named Pincay Drive connects South Prairie Avenue on the west to Crenshaw Boulevard on the East. It is nearly a mile long and dead straight, unremarkable except for the history it holds in six white letters on a green background. Pincay Drive is ostensibly an homage to Hall of Fame thoroughbred jockey Laffit Pincay, Jr. “When they named it, the mayor of Inglewood sent a letter,’’ says Pincay, who retired in 2003 and is now 75. “I’m proud of that street.’’ As he should be: Only one rider in history has won more races than Pincay. The sign bearing his name recognizes a towering personal greatness. But also the passage of time and a dimming legacy (not his). It is part guidepost, part memorial.

SoFi – it’s called a “stadium,’’ but it is so breathtaking in scope that it begs for a fresh noun, much like the Astrodome did more than a half century ago – sits on the earth where once sat Hollywood Park, a racetrack (and at times, it seems, a sport) from another time. Before it was Hollywood Park, it was a bean field, and then when it opened in 1938, a marriage of old Hollywood itself and the erstwhile Sport of Kings. Its original backers included Bing Crosby and Walt Disney. It remained so for many years, a place to be seen and photographed. “My earliest days there,’’ says Pincay. “I met so many movie stars.’’  Triple Crown winners Citation, Seattle Slew and Affirmed raced at Hollywood Park. The first Breeders Cup championships took place at Hollywood, in 1984 (and returned twice thereafter). Gradually, the movie stars stopped coming, and eventually, so too the horses. A dispiriting racing tale played on an endless loop.

The final race at Hollywood