A Little League baseball game played in a park in Garden City, N.Y., three days before the Kentucky Derby may have foreshadowed what lay ahead for jockey Javier Castellano on the first Saturday in May.

Bottom of the sixth – the last inning – in a 0-0 game, 10-year-old Brady Castellano, Javier’s son, gets his first hit of the season. Steals second. Steals third. Next batter hits a ground ball to second and Castellano beats the throw home, sliding in safely to score the game-winning run.

A celebration ensues.

BALTIMORE – Every spring, hard on the third Saturday in May, racing scribes fire up “new shooters” pieces, stories about horses who skipped the Kentucky Derby and ran in the Preakness Stakes.

The main story this year concerns not a new shooter but a lone soldier, Mage, the only horse among eight Preakness entrants racing in the second leg of the Triple Crown after contesting the first.

The mission is excellence. And Godolphin’s American arm, chasing a third consecutive sweep of the Eclipse Award outstanding owner and breeder titles, is already in hot pursuit of that mission.

A new trainer has not yet been named for 2022 Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike, but owner Rick Dawson indicated that he plans for the colt to remain based in Kentucky.

Dawson wrote on his Facebook page that his horses were moved on Saturday from former trainer Eric Reed’s Mercury Equine Center in Lexington to Blackwood Stables in Versailles, on the other side of town. Blackwood, a full breaking, training, and lay-up facility, has a six-furlong dirt track and a turf course and is accredited for public official workouts.

Smile Happy and Played Hard, both of whom scored major victories on the first weekend in May, are among those expected to line up for another marquee card at Churchill Downs on the first weekend of July.

Trainer Kenny McPeek confirmed that Smile Happy is pointing to the Grade 1, $1 million Stephen Foster on July 1, a race that will award its winner a berth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic this November at Santa Anita.

Golden Gate Fields will operate an 18-day late summer and autumn meeting on a Saturday-through-Monday basis this year, eliminating racing on Fridays during the six-week season that begins Aug. 26.

General manager David Duggan said Sunday that a move to Monday racing will be an attempt to boost handle for the Northern California track on a day in which few tracks operate after Labor Day.

“Until we try to change things a little bit, we won’t be moving the needle,” Duggan said.

Jockey Flavien Prat has been booked to ride Country Grammer in the Grade 1 Hollywood Gold Cup on May 29 at Santa Anita, the first time he has ridden the multiple stakes winner in the United States since a victory in the same race in 2021.

Prat rode Country Grammer to a second-place finish in the $20 million Saudi Cup in Saudi Arabia in February 2022. Country Grammer has since been ridden by Frankie Dettori, John Velazquez, and Juan Hernandez.