LAS VEGAS – Floyd Mayweather took home more than $41 million for his workmanlike win over Saul “Canelo” Alvarez last Saturday night at the MGM Grand, so his pockets were full. But a lot of us were left with an empty feeling and wondering about the future of boxing.

Some old habits die harder than others. For example, on Steve Byk’s “At the Races” radio show Friday morning, trainer John Sadler, fresh from a title at Del Mar, was running through his candidates for upcoming races, only recently renamed, at the Santa Anita autumn meet. To his credit, he got them all right – the John Henry, the Zenyatta, the Awesome Again, the Rodeo Drive – only he didn’t call it the Santa Anita autumn meet.

He called it Oak Tree.

LAS VEGAS – I really respect when an oddsmaker puts out the first numbers before anyone else (and the bettors that match wits with him).

Most modern-day sports books wait until they see the lines at other books in Las Vegas and offshore and then put up a “safe” number, hoping for two-way action. You could do that part of the job without knowing a single player on any of the teams and how they’re playing or who is injured.

Innovations in racetrack wagering are so rare that when two new bets made their debuts during opening week at Belmont Park, it was as if Halley’s Comet had returned to our solar system twice in a week instead of waiting 75 years between visits.

First, when the track opened last Saturday, there was its inaugural pick five on the day’s first five races. Granted, it took almost two years from proposal to inception due =to inexcusable regulatory intransigence and bureaucratic delays, but it’s finally here and players warmed up to it quickly.

The six-furlong Arabian Derby scheduled atop the Friday afternoon program of Barretts Racing at Fairplex Park was billed with a $16,000 purse and drew eight of the dish-faced, high-tailed little critters, with both 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds welcomed. A quick scan of the field revealed that almost all of them were bred in Texas – yee-haw – but a deeper drill into the nine running lines of the recent Ferndale maiden winner Vaz Djets On came up with a familiar name from a race at Fairplex exactly one year ago. Her rider that day was one J.M. Scott.

The flashback is the same. Every time there is a guided tour of a busy construction site by a beaming, enthusiastic racetrack impresario, I am taken back to the autumn of 1984, to Hollywood Park, where the boss herself, Marjorie Everett, was leading a parade of local press up the winding tower at the west end of the freshly christened the Pavilion of the Stars.

Martin Pedroza was asked what happened last year, when for the first time since 1999 he was not the leading rider at the Los Angeles County Fair, now known as Barretts Racing at Fairplex Park. He was sitting in the Del Mar jockeys lounge, in baggy shorts and a loose tank top befitting the final day of the summer meet. He raised his right arm.

People who work at the New York Racing Association understandably bristle when anyone says that the annual Saratoga meeting is essentially a foolproof operation that runs itself. When I worked there more than 15 years ago, I bristled, too, arguing how hard the employees worked and how much time and effort it took to put on the show.

If the question was asked once this summer it was asked a hundred times:

“Have you been to Saratoga?”

Coming in second was, “When did you stop working out?” But that’s a whole different bag of chips.
The Saratoga question usually hit while loitering somewhere at Del Mar – in the sun-baked walking ring, in the shade of the clubhouse box seats, hanging on the rail in the grandstand tunnel as a field made its way to the track.

LAS VEGAS – Last week’s college football menu was appetizing, but now we move onto the main course with the NFL kicking off this weekend.