So if I tilt my head just right, shade my eyes, and listen only to the birds in the trees, there is a chance to pretend that the past month really didn’t happen, and that all I need to do is click my ruby red boot heels together three times and chant, “There’s no place like Santa Anita. There’s no place like Santa Anita.” Didn’t work. The tenuous resumption of racing this weekend in Southern California should have everyone on edge. Those who are not clearly have access to a better brand of Xanax. The main track may be fast and the turf firm, but the surfaces are littered with eggshells, while opposing forces leer at the gates, gleefully waiting for the next racehorse to fall. Into this morass – the result of 22 equine fatalities this winter at Santa Anita and the reaction that sometimes bordered on the hysterical – march jockeys, owners, and trainers and their stable crews intent on proving that the sport is neither as cruel as cockfighting nor on its last, spindly legs. Saturday’s program of racing, coast-to-coast, should be cause to hang from the rafters in wild celebration. The Kentucky Derby winner could emerge from the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park, where 14 races will test the limits of both man and beast. Aqueduct chimes in with a curious card full of starter stakes, offering large fields for players and good money for blue-collar Thoroughbreds without the threat of a claim. As for Santa Anita, Saturday first has to survive Friday’s reopening, but what a day awaits. Both the Kilroe Mile and the Beholder Stakes feature such familiar names as River Boyne, Catapult, Next Shares, Marley’s Freedom, and Selcourt, while the San Carlos, as usual, presents a compelling seven furlongs. Pity the poor Santa Ana Stakes, nestled there among them. When the Santa Anita schedule was released last November, the grass race for older fillies and mares had March 30 all to itself, assured of at least a few minor headlines appropriate for a Grade 3 race at a mile and a quarter in the midst of Triple Crown fever. Now, however, with the other three stakes bumped to Saturday from canceled dates, the winner of the Santa Ana will be lucky to grab a line of agate. Eight are entered, and all have been dealing with the stops and starts of local training and racing during the past months of harsh weather and track condition. The last time the Irish mare Zaffinah ran was in the Grade 3 Megahertz Stakes on Jan. 21, when she finished a solid third to division leader Vasilika going a mile on giving ground. “She’s just a real genuine mare who tries hard all the time, even working on the dirt when she’s not really a dirt filly,” said her trainer, Jack Carava. “And if you draw a line through her 6 1/2-furlong races down the hill, which we knew really aren’t her thing, she’s got a pretty decent record.” Zaffinah, a daughter of Casamento, is one of those runners suited best to a narrow range. Over the past two years, she has three wins, two seconds, and a third in seven starts at eight or nine furlongs, so the added furlong gives Carava pause. “We’ll do some handicapping,” he said. “The shorter Royal Heroine is coming up, but the competition is a step up from Saturday. You always want to try and place a horse where its ability fits the circumstances.” Horses are lucky to be trained by Carava – horses like Neighborhood Bully, a 4-year-old gelding running for a $16,000 claiming price in the second race on Saturday, and Rather Nosy, a 3-year-old filly going in the third, a starter optional. Both were claimed by Carava in January, when the winter storms were raging and six horses were fatally injured either training or racing on the main track. “You can do a lot of assuming,” Carava said. “My assumption was that the bad weather had a lot to do with what happened. Training came down to a decision – either sacrificing potential fitness to wait for a better track, or worry about safety in an effort to keep your horse fit. My preference was to be very comfortable about the track when I worked my horses, so you’ll see work patterns that are sort of spotty during that time. “The big picture I always try to see and transfer to my owners is that this is basically a 365-day circuit, and the wet weather of the winter is a pretty small window compared to the rest of the year,” Carava went on. “I think all horses have ‘X’ amount of starts in them before they’re tired, and if you use those starts in the right clumps you’ll be okay. For most of us, these wet tracks gave us a chance to give horses a bit more time, so they could have more quality starts during the summer.” With a 1,086 wins and counting at a sensible 15 percent rate since he started training in 1986, Carava has seen more than one crisis come and go. But he knows that the anti-racing protesters and the non-racing media can’t be ignored. “This storm is bigger than most we’ve endured over the years,” Carava said. “But this has a different feel to it. Hopefully we’ll have some positive things happen, beginning this weekend.”