A 33.5m Ferris wheel. Race cars painted in MLB team colors. Food trucks. Live music. Pitching tunnels and batting cages. A chance for photos with the Commissioner’s Trophy and Clydesdales.
Of course, there is merchandise available for any fans who forgot to grab their gear supporting the Atlanta Braves or Cincinnati Reds or simply commemorating a spectacle unlike any other.
“My sister’s already texted me asking for a T-shirt,” said Marcia Lorenzo, 39, from Charleston, South Carolina.
Photo: AP
After about four years in the planning, it was finally time for the MLB Speedway Classic to play ball — scheduled for after press time last night — on the diamond constructed on the infield at Bristol Motor Speedway at the place called the “Last Great Colisseum.”
“When you walk up to Bristol Motor Speedway, much like many of our venues, you know you’re at a big iconic sports location,” MLB senior vice president of global events Jeremiah Yolkut said. “You feel it. You walk into Wrigley Field, Fenway Park, you feel it, and that’s what Bristol Motor Speedway is for NASCAR.”
The MLB Speedway Classic was first announced nearly a year ago as part of MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s push to take MLB to places where baseball is not played every day live. MLB played a game at the movie site in Iowa in 2021 and 2022. Alabama, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, too.
Now it is time for Tennessee, which has teams in the NFL, NBA, NHL and MLS, but no MLB team, even as a group chases an expansion franchise for Nashville.
The game mixes the rich racing history of Bristol, which hosts a pair of NASCAR races each year, and Tennessee.
“So we quickly worked to make it so that we could viably create this magic moment and give fans, that don’t get regular season baseball all the time, an opportunity to see it right there in their backyard in Tennessee,” Yolkut said.
The Reds, chasing an National League wild-card berth, split the first two games in this series with Atlanta. The rubber match would be a part of history as the first MLB game played in the state of Tennessee.
They were to play before the largest crowd ever to see an MLB regular-season game, too.
Reds outfielder Austin Hays said it would be a fun game and cannot wait to see how loud it gets.
“I used to go to the truck races and the [Daytona] 500, the Rolex. I went to high school near Daytona,” Hays said on Friday after the Reds’ 3-2 win over Atlanta.
“It is the only track I’ve ever been to. It’s a pretty big track. I imagine it’s going to be similar standing on the infield, but it will be a baseball field this time” he said.
The MLB did not try to sell every ticket inside the speedway that drew 156,990 for the Battle of Bristol college football game in 2016. The track with a racing capacity of 146,000 could host 90,000 or more, even with sections blocked off.
Officials announced on Monday that more than 85,000 tickets had been sold — topping the previous paid attendance of 84,587 set on Sept. 12, 1954, when Cleveland Stadium hosted the New York Yankees.
Sean Casey, a three-time All-Star now on the MLB Network, sees this as two superpowers coming together in a perfect partnership. NASCAR and baseball already cross over in the Atlanta and Cincinnati markets, and this crossover exposes fans to the other sport.
“It’s such a unique situation,” Casey said on Friday after broadcasting from the field with MLB Network. “Kudos to [commissioner] Rob Manfred of Major League Baseball and also NASCAR and Bristol Motor Speedway for putting this event together because it’s going to be one of a kind.”
Once the time comes for fans to move inside Bristol, the schedule features a pre-game concert with Jake Owen joining stars Tim McGraw and Pitbull. A flyover by US Navy jets, and a pair of Hall of Famers in Atlanta’s Chipper Jones and Johnny Bench of the Reds would handle the ceremonial first pitch.
Hunter Greear from Charleston, South Carolina, bought tickets with three friends a year ago. They arrived on Thursday, camping out and enjoying the weekend. Greear said they really didn’t know what to expect from MLB putting a baseball field in the infield of a racetrack.
“We had an idea, but everything that’s been leading up to [the game] really has been making that idea even bigger than we could possibly expect it to be,” Greear said.
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