Don Guido, one of these days you'll have to tell us what you really feel
Ruff, you are probably correct about Monmouth. The final half of their card has some very good races. A number of our players will probably be playing the free Haskell Game, all 14 races of it.
I grew up in Monmouth County, so must show proper respect to Molly Pitcher, the heroine of the Battle of Monmouth Courthouse during the Revolutionary War and the namesake of race 14. Heck, while I was in high school I even caddied for the gentleman [and he truly was a gentleman] for whom the feature stakes race is named.
But [there's always a "but", isn't there?], it is OPENING WEEKEND at Saratoga, and many of us have been waiting for it to arrive, even without the fans to join John Imbriale in calling out, "And they're off at Saratoga." While some of the fields may lack quantity, they appear to have quality. We will get to see the races live on Fox Sports. We can enjoy what is arguably the best jockey colony in the country. And we can at least dream that we could be there in person [sigh]. In lieu of that, we can start Saturday morning by reading the 2020 Saratoga Special, one of the best racing publications around and just the thing to get one into the right frame of mind.
So, our contest card for Saturday will be as follows:
Races 2 through 11 at Saratoga, followed by
Race 12 from Monmouth [the Haskell Stakes]
Post time for Race 2 at the Spa will be 1:43 Eastern time.
Entries for all races are available - time to start studying.
