REVERE — Keys dangling from his belt and a dusty Marine Corps cap pulled tight over his head, Paul Brooker leaned on the white rail along the edge of the paddock at Suffolk Downs Wednesday and sighed.
“Well, they finally found a way to get rid of me,” the track’s longtime head horseshoe inspector and repairer said. Thousands of race days have passed since his grandmother dropped him off in 1948, hoping to make a jockey out of him. Now, just a few more are left, after Suffolk Down’s demise was sealed when the state gambling panel chose a rival plan in Everett over the proposal to save the track with a casino.
Live racing— held now just Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday — will end Sept. 29, Suffolk Downs chief operating officer Chip Tuttle said. Simulcasting, betting on races broadcast from elsewhere, will end sometime in December, when Suffolk Downs closes for good, just shy of age 80.
In some ways, Suffolk Downs Wednesday was its usual self, framed photos hinting at the old grandeur — a natty Bing Crosby in the stands in ’37, Triple Crown winner Whirlaway, covered in garlands, after claiming the MassCap in ’42 — amid crumpled betting slips, picture-tube TVs, and rows of mostly closed betting windows.
But crowds were light, as they have been for years. Outside at post time, there were more benches in front of the clubhouse than people, and Brooker mourned a way of life that, for him, started as a teen, when he was so slight that “my eyes were single-file” and he could slip on 26-waist jeans without unbuttoning them.
He said he became a shoer after he shattered his arm in the Marines and grew a foot and gained 100 pounds while on bedrest and steroid treatments. His jockey days were over. But he found that making a horse’s hooves comfortable felt more vital to victory than riding.
“Everything comes to an end,” he said. “Some of us saw it coming and hoped it wouldn’t.”
Down at the paddock, security guard Carter Bibbey clapped the backs of the walkers, people who walk the horses to cool them down after races. “Hey Papa,” he said to one man, who just shook his head sadly. “Not a good day.”
The simulcast seemed to draw more eyes than the live racing. But the crowd, swallowed up by a venue that once outdrew Fenway Park, would occasionally surge to the windows or the edge of the fence, calling out amid bursts of hope and swings of emotion.
They talked the same talk as always. “They got the bridge-jumpers out today. Look at that show pool! 22-1,” said Malcolm Silva, a 71-year-old from East Boston who has been a regular since he first slipped the fence at 12, watching betting dollars flood in on a highly favored horse named Hey Kid.
Out in the sunshine, it was possible, for a moment, to ignore the news and the empty seats and admire the gleaming horses and jockey’s silks, the pastel spray of flowers on the infield.
“This is the greatest part-time job in the world,” said paddock guard Bibbey, a 70-year-old Winthrop native who had tried a few security jobs after taking a buyout as an American Airlines sales manager before landing at the track.
He took to it immediately, the colorful characters and the horses, particularly a lead pony named Stumpy, who guides thoroughbreds around the track before races. Each time Stumpy returns, Bibbey slips him a couple of Brachs peppermint hard candies, and Stumpy returns the favor with nuzzling.
“For three years, we’ve been best of friends,” he said. When Stumpy returned to the paddock after the first race, Bibbey slipped him a peppermint, and Stumpy licked up and down the sleeve of his windbreaker and nudged his back, hoping for another. The man obliged, giving Stumpy one more. “I love you, Stumpy,” Bibbey said, patting the horse. “My pal.”
Down by the fence, he chatted with Frank and Chris Arren, a semiretired Needham couple who own shares in a racehorse partnership, an investment that reignited Frank’s love for the pageantry of the sport and reminded Chris of seeing the Beatles play Suffolk Downs when she was 16. “We’ve met so many nice people here,” Frank said, “it’s just a shame the vote went this way.”
Nearby, a breathless Rhode Islander — he identified himself only as a former jai alai announcer — tried to sell them on the idea that overturning the gaming law at the ballot in November might dash the Everett casino, and breathe new life into Suffolk — if they can make a bid for a separate law for slots.
Unlikely, Bibbey said, as much as they wanted to believe it. “There is no hope,” he said.
But there will always be some who believe in a longshot at the track, a tradition winding down at Suffolk. The Rhode Islander strode toward the betting windows. “I’m gonna go make my donation,” he said.
Eric Moskowitz can be reached at emoskowitz@globe.com.