A baseball field in a racetrack? MLB’s Speedway Classic makes history

BRISTOL, Tenn. (AP) — A 110-foot 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’s 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.

After about four years in the planning, it’s finally time for the MLB Speedway Classic to play ball Saturday 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,” said Jeremiah Yolkut, MLB’s senior vice president of global events. “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 Commissioner Rob Manfred’s push to take MLB to places where baseball isn’t played every day live. MLB played a game at the movie site in Iowa in both 2021 and 2022. Alabama, North Carolina and Pennsylvania, too.

Now it’s 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. This game mixes the rich racing history of both 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 NL wild-card berth, split the first two games in this series with Atlanta. The rubber match will be a part of history as the first Major League Baseball game played in the state of Tennessee.

They will play before the largest crowd ever to see an MLB regular-season game, too.

Reds outfielder Austin Hays said this will be a fun game and can’t 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 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.”

MLB didn’t 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 Monday more than 85,000 tickets had been sold — topping the previous paid attendance of 84,587 set 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 super powers 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 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 Navy jets, and a pair of Hall of Famers in Atlanta’s Chipper Jones and Johnny Bench of the Reds will handle the ceremonial first pitch.

Hunter Greear from Charleston, South Carolina, bought tickets with three friends a year ago. They arrived 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,” Greear said. “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.”

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AP Freelance Writer Gary Schatz in Cincinnati contributed to this report.

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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing