I can guarantee you the old Joe E. Hirsch Media Center didn’t look like this.

As I wrote Wednesday, the press box is gone. It has been renovated (to say the least) and now is “The Mansion.” Only high-rollers need apply.

Leigh Montville gave his assessment as only he can in a column at Sports on Earth.

One day it was right there, “the Joe Hirsch Media Center,” the place where Damon Runyon and Ring Lardner and Red Smith and, sure, Joe Hirsch typed out descriptions of the characters, machinations and adventures involved in the first 138 years of Kentucky Derby. The next day, poof, the same space is occupied by “The Mansion,” a special area designed and interior-decorated for only the highest of high rollers, the biggest of big wigs, the corporate killers.

The prime rooftop views that once were the basis for stories on America’s most famous horse race, tales of Whirlaway and Citation, Secretariat and Seattle Slew, stories that were shipped around the country and around the world, now have a price tag. A maker might pay as much as $12,500 for the right to sit next to a $12,500 shaker for an afternoon to discuss bloodlines, the market and the virtues of a well-made mint julep in the exact same spot.

Montville then makes up a bewildered young sportswriter who learns he has to watch the race on TV:

“Dateline Louisville. Ace Reporter here. I am told that it is sunny outside today for the Kentucky Derby, but I do not know for sure. I am inside the press room, watching the many screens. I can hear the song — ‘My Old Kentucky Home’ — being played as the 21 horses parade down the track. I think it’s being played at the track, too, but can’t be sure. It is being played on the television screens. …

“The horses all have entered the gate. There is a little commotion on the screen. A hush in the room, probably out on the track also. A bell. The gates are open. They’re off … wait a minute. Did somebody just hit the clicker? Why are all the television screens tuned to something about duck hunters? Where is the race? Duck hunters?

“I’m going to be fired when I get home.”