Short fields order of the day

Who in heck wants to go to the races, pay to park, pay to get in, pay to buy a Racing Form and then be confronted with a mess of five-horse fields? Unbelievable.

Somehow, some way, racing officials have to come up with a solution to these short fields that I firmly believe are contributing to smaller on-track crowds. It's no wonder that all-sources handle is down double digits at this current Santa Anita meet when you look at Thursday's card.

First race -- five horses
Second race -- five horses
Third race -- five horses
Fifth race -- five horses

Now short fields might be understandable if we'd had bad weather or whatever and races were taken off the turf and run over the main track, but we're dealing with beautiful 80-degree temperatures, not to mention the fact that these synthetics are supposed to be all-weather and not affected by rain.