Mobile Bay streaks into Star Guitar

You can say this about the Fair Grounds racing department – they know how to close the loop of a race meet.

The 2017-2018 Fair Grounds season began Nov. 18 with an older-horse Lousiana-bred route stakes, and it ends Saturday with a feature in the same division.

Eight were entered in the $75,000 Star Guitar Stakes, carded as race 10 of 12 at 1 1/16 miles on dirt, and the horse on the outside, Mobile Bay, has the inside track on favoritism.

Trained by Victor Arceneaux for the Tigertail Ranch, Mobile Bay is a $1.2 million earner and winner in 12 of his 27 starts. He enters with a four-race winning streak spanning 16 months, and was last seen at Fair Grounds winning the Louisiana Champions Day Classic while returning from a long layoff on Dec. 9. But while calling Mobile Bay a little bit lucky might not be fair . . . okay, the gelding has been a little bit lucky.

Mobile Bay won the Champions Day Classic by a scant nose, and the margin was the same in his most recent start, the Premier Championship on Feb. 10 at Delta Downs. Mobile Bay was not exactly traveling smoothly in that victory, and his first published work back came on March 24.

Underpressure, the horse Mobile Bay barely held off at Delta, and Grande Basin, who just missed getting him in the Classic, are back in the Star Guitar, as is the periodically capable Mageez. But also of interest is a horse who when the Fair Grounds meet began had won his only start, a five-furlong Delta maiden race. Morning Mischief has come a long way in five starts since then, but long enough to win the Star Guitar? Possibly.

Morning Mischief ran flat in one January allowance race, but otherwise his pattern of development is all forward. He stepped into stakes company for the first time while making his grass debut in the Dixie Poker Ace on March 3, set the pace, and held third, beaten just a length by two good Louisiana-breds, Trust Factor and Extra Credit. Morning Mischief has a chance to make the front from an inside draw under Mitchell Murrill, who scored the biggest win of his career last Saturday in the $400,000 Fair Grounds Oaks.