Final Boss © Benoit Photo
If you can go back a little in your Major League baseball history, you may be familiar with the now famous phrase “Let’s play two.”
Those words were uttered by the Chicago Cubs’ Hall of Famer Ernie Banks to his teammates on a hot afternoon with the temperature above 100 degrees. Banks, a man who loved what he was doing and was always full of positive vibes, tried to rally the troops in the locker room to take on their single-game task ahead. Legend has it that it worked.
Though Del Mar’s weather won’t be anywhere near hot come Sunday, the track is going the Ernie route and bringing out a pair of stakes races to highlight its 11-race program. First it will offer the 83rd edition of the La Jolla Handicap, a mile and one-sixteenth on the turf for 3-year-olds that carries a $100,000 purse. Then comes the 71st running of the CTBA Stakes, another $100 grander but this one at five and a half furlongs on the main track and limited to 2-year-old fillies.
The La Jolla – which is the second of three 3-year-old grass stakes conducted during the Del Mar meet – has drawn a field of six topped by a chestnut colt named Final Boss, who struts his stuff out of the barn of conditioner John Sadler. The son of Triple Crown star American Pharoah is owned by the partnership of Talla Racing and West Point Thoroughbreds and comes into the race off a solid score in Santa Anita’s Cinema Stakes on June 16. That race was run at a mile and one-eighth, so the colt will be cutting back just a tad on Sunday. Leading rider Juan Hernandez has the call.
The CTBA is the first juvenile stakes of the current meet. It is also one of eight Cal-bred stakes that will be run at Del Mar this summer as part of the $4.45-million Golden State Stakes series consisting of 35 events run statewide strictly for California-bred runners.
Topping the roster of eight youngsters named to the dash is Wilkes Racing, Halasz or Lovinger’s Thirsty in Vegas, a daughter of Stay Thirsty who comes into the race off an impressive front-running tally in a straight maiden affair at Santa Anita on June 15. Trainer Steve Knapp will saddle ‘Thirsty’ and give rider Antonio Fresu a leg up in the process. Additionally, Knapp also will send out another Stay Thirsty filly in Lovinger and partner’s In the Air Tonight, a narrow winner of her lone outing at Santa Anita on May 26. Tiago Pereira will be in the tack once again for her.
The Sunday 11-race card will kick off at the traditional 2 p.m. start time. The La Jolla should go postward at approximately 4 p.m., while the CTBA is scheduled for approximately 6:30.