It wasn't quite fitting that the final day at Aqueduct Racetrack was a bucolic and lazy Sunday in early summer, with a calm breeze floating over the Belt from the bay, and the sky a light blue with friendly, puffy little clouds floating so close that you could almost pluck them from the gossamer heavens and embrace them.
No, if this was truly to be the end of Aqueduct, New York's hardscrabble racetrack, it should have been a dreary, soul-smashing day in the pits of February, the cold wind whipping over the grandstand as jetliners roared overhead, the skies leaden and baleful, and the price of a "soul" worth no more than a trifecta payout at some faraway racetrack as you gazed sullenly at the lines of TV monitors, with the broken-down horses actually standing in front of you being led one step closer to eternity.