Act I: A $2,500 yearling purchase goes on to beat Einstein in the Grade 1 Gulfstream Park Breeders’ Cup Handicap and The Tin Man in the Grade 1 Arlington Million, earning $1.6 million along the way, before being sidelined by an injury.

Act II: The same horse returns this autumn from a nearly two-year layoff to win his comeback race at age 7.

It may sound like the stuff of fairy tales, but for Jambalaya, it’s very real. And Saturday at Aqueduct, the gelded son of Langfuhr hopes to write yet another chapter in his improbable life story when he faces six others in the Grade 2, $150,000 Red Smith Handicap.

“It’s been one bizarre story after another, ever since we bought him,” said trainer Catherine Day-Phillips, who with her husband, Todd, picked Jambalaya out of the Keeneland yearling sales in 2003. “Now, after 18 months of ups and downs and heartbreak, his life is simple again.”

The Red Smith, at 1 3/8th miles on the turf, is one of three graded stakes on the eight-race live card at Aqueduct, which also features the full simulcast of Day 2 of the Breeders’ Cup from Santa Anita Park. Belmont Stakes, Shadwell Travers and Jockey Club Gold Cup winner Summer Bird, Amsterdam winner Quality Road, Man o’War and Manhattan winner Gio Ponti and 2008 Travers winner Colonel John are among a dozen looking to upset Zenyatta in the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic.

On the live card, joining the Red Smith, which will be run as race No. 6, are the Grade 2, $150,000 Nashua for 2-year-olds and the Grade 3, $100,000 Tempted for 2-year-old fillies, which will be run as the fourth and seventh races, respectively.

Jambalaya, whose only other New York appearance came when he won the Grade 3 Saranac at Saratoga in 2005, looked very much like his old self in his return, drawing clear to a two-length victory in an optional claimer at Woodbine on September 18, his first start since winning the 2007 Arlington Million.

“He had injured himself during the Arlington Million, and an MRI revealed a bone bruise to a cannon bone,” said Day-Phillips. “He wasn’t bad, but he wasn’t quite right. When we finally breezed him the following spring, he pulled a muscle behind. We were getting ready to run him in Florida, but things kept falling apart.

“After a series of setbacks, we were hand-walking him, and debating whether to turn him out and retire him. But he looked so good, and I think he would have been insulted if we had turned him out,” she added.

Although he is 2-1-0 from three starts at the Red Smith distance, the race will not be an easy one for Jambalaya, who drew the rail under jockey Eddie Castro and was named the second choice at 5-2. Facing him will be a multiple Grade 1 winner in Grand Couturier (GB), a two-time winner of the Sword Dancer Invitational as well as the 2008 Joe Hirsch Turf Classic Invitational, who is the morning line favorite at 9-5.

Trained by Bobby Ribaudo for Marc Keller, the 6-year-old son of Grand Lodge won the Grade 3 Bowling Green in September and was placed third in the 2009 Joe Hirsch in his most recent start.

The Red Smith also drew the Christophe Clement-trained Operation Red Dawn, recent winner of the Grade 3 Knickerbocker for owner Dion Recachina, and another Canadian-based horse, the Roger Attfield-trained Spice Route (GB), who earlier this year won the Grade 2 Elkhorn at Keeneland. Completing the field are Eldon Farm’s Wheels Up At Noon, Gary and Mary West’s Expansion, and Haras Old Friends’ Mr. Universo (BRZ).