It’s premature to say that Father Time is catching up with Greeley and Ben. “He’s a war horse,” trainer Horacio De Paz told Daily Racing Form last week. “Very easy to work with. Considering he is a 10-year-old, he’s a happy horse on the racetrack. He actually wants to play around a little bit more than a 10-year-old would want to do.” Owned by Darryl Abramowitz’s DEA Thoroughbred Racing, Greeley and Ben does not fool around when he steps into the gate. A winner in 25 of 43 starts, the gelding starts as one of the favorites in Friday’s Fire Plug for 4-year-olds and up racing 6 1/2 furlongs at Laurel Park. A first- or second-place finish would propel Greeley and Ben over $1 million in lifetime earnings. :: Bet the races with a $200 First Deposit Match + FREE All Access PPs! Join DRF Bets. The Fire Plug is one of two $100,000 stakes on the 10-race program along with the What a Summer for fillies and mares at six furlongs. Both were originally scheduled for last Saturday but were postponed and redrawn after racing was abandoned due to adverse weather conditions. Greeley and Ben won his last two starts at Laurel, including the Dave’s Friend in last-to-first fashion on Dec. 23. He finished last of five seven days later in Aqueduct’s Gravesend. “A little ambitious coming back with a solid field of horses that he faced, but he took care of himself,” De Paz said. “He knows how to take those defeats. It doesn’t hurt his spirits. He doesn’t get out of the feed tub or anything like that.” With only five starts, 5-year-old Frat Pack is a mere babe in the woods compared to a venerable veteran like Greeley and Ben. A pace-pressing winner of a first-level allowance during the Belmont at the Big A meeting when trained by Chad Brown, Frat Pack was purchased by Dr. Adam Ainspan’s Graham Grace Stable for $240,000 at the Keeneland November sale and transferred to trainer Whit Beckman. “He’s run fast races,” Beckman said last week. “He’s won a couple. We got lucky and got him for what we thought was a reasonable price. Since then, we brought him slowly back up to a consistent work tab.” Prior to last week’s postponement, Beckman had hoped the timing of the Fire Plug, coupled with a good performance, would attract an invitation to the Riyadh Dirt Sprint on the Saudi Cup undercard on Feb. 24. Trainer Raymond Ginter Jr. and Lynn Cash’s Built Wright Stables send out the uncoupled duo of Cowan and Sir Alfred James. Cowan “is a difficult horse,” Cash said last week. “We thought we’d work him one time at Laurel. He ran about 20 yards and stopped.” Despite his quirks – he often gives the gate crew fits behind the gate – a Fire Plug win makes him a millionaire. Cowan was fourth, beaten three-quarter of a length in the Dave’s Friend. “He lost a shoe,” Cash said. “Heck of a run.” Since that race, Cowan worked an unrecorded five-eighths in company with Cash’s Grade 2 winner Double Crown. Sir Alfred James has already cracked $1 million. Although off the board in his last two, Cash believes “he’s in better form than he’s shown.” The 8-year-old gelding finished fifth in Churchill’s Bet On Sunshine on Nov. 4, then was ninth in the Dave’s Friend. “Every time he runs [at Churchill], it could be the competition, it could be the hardness of the track, but the hard tracks wear on him,” Cash said. “He got hit hard coming out of the gate [in the Dave’s Friend]. His back end was a little sore.” Brother Conway, claimed for $16,000 by trainer Kieron Magee in June, makes his stakes debut seeking his fifth consecutive victory. He looks like one of the main speeds breaking from the rail. The consistent Super Chow has speed as well. He’s hit the board in 14 of 15 but was just beaten at odds-on in a second-level allowance on Christmas Eve at Gulfstream. Classier, Dontmesawithme, Dollarization, and Murray also entered. What a Summer Stakes winners Headland and Kant Hurry Love are the headliners in the What a Summer. Headland, trained by George Weaver, made her Laurel debut a winning one with a gate-to-wire score in last month’s Willa On the Move. Kant Hurry Love finished 2 1/2 lengths ahead of Headland when necked by Hot Fudge in Aqueduct’s Garland of Roses on Dec. 9. Trainer David Duggan told NYRA track publicity last week that Kant Hurry Love “is in great order. She’s like a dog with a bone right now.” White Chocolate has speed and upside. She exits a front-running win at Aqueduct. Anonymously steps up in class seeking her fifth straight win, while the speedy Ms. Bucchero figures to force the pace after producing a game stretch re-rally to capture a high-level allowance Dec. 17. Baytown Lovely, Beneath the Stars, Prodigy Doll, and Vinegar Veggies are expected. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.