by Jack Ginnetti

Marlborough, MA — You know it’s summer’s last gasp when the Bert Beckwith Memorial rolls around again on Monday (Labor Day) at Plainridge Racecourse. The season’s biggest race day at the Massachusetts track, just five miles south of Gillette Stadium, features a mix of events that draws the season’s biggest crowd.

At noon the track will hold its popular Wall of Fame ceremony and reveal the identity of its newest member and stable star.

The scene then shifts to the first race on the 12-race program for the first leg of the popular legends driving series. Competing for top honors and attempting to dethrone Steve O’Toole, last year’s champion, are Paul Battis, Leigh Fitch (over 7,600 career wins), John Hogan, Greg Bowden (who was the track’s leading driver before giving way to Jim Hardy and returning to Maine), Willard Beckwith and O’Toole, a Clinton, Mass., native and the track’s general manager.

Races will also be held for the C.K.G. Billings Amateur Driving Series and the New England Amateur Drivers Club.

Purse money of nearly $100,000 will be offered, highlighted by the $20,000 Beckwith Memorial (10th race), with Mark Beckwith driving Chanels Dragon, and the Stan Bergstein Pace (eighth race). The $10,000 trot in memory of Ron Pasquantononio is race number nine.

Other memorial races will remember Ken Heeney, James Morrill, Sr., Kurt Areano, Gary Kamal, James Winters, Joe Hartmann, David Marshall and Bucky Day.

The day’s live racing card gets underway at 1 p.m. (EDT).