MLB Speedway Classic: How record-setting Bristol Motor Speedway game came to be

USA Today

4 days ago

BRISTOL, TN — Using a cliché to describe a sporting event has become, well, cliché.
Some clichés have made a complete 360, where they start as a description of a sports situation, graduate to becoming totally figurative, and then come home to roost. Such is the situation in Bristol, Tennessee, where the NASCAR racetrack has such an uneven infield that 'leveling the playing field' is literally the task at hand.
When Major League Baseball brings its 2025 jewel event to Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday, Aug. 2 , it will require sufficient gravel to create a level surface for the artificial turf. Longtime MLB ballpark consultant Murray Cook of BrightView says that it required 18,000 tons of gravel to be trucked into the venue to account for the 4-foot difference in elevation between the track and the center of the infield.
Think about that. Legally, a fully loaded concrete truck is limited to a weight of 80,000 pounds, or 40 tons. That means when the Cincinnati Reds and Atlanta Braves take the field, they'll be running across the equivalent of 450 cement trucks worth of gravel.
That's one of the impressive feats undertaken by MLB and its partners to be able to present a baseball game where none has been attempted before.
'We've explored that'
'You never know who's watching when you're putting on events,' says Jerry Caldwell, president of Bristol Motor Speedway, better known as 'BMS' in NASCAR circles. For instance, in 2016 the facility hosted The Battle of Bristol pitting the football teams from Tennessee and Virginia Tech.
It sure took a lot of gravel to level a whole football field.
But MLB noticed the way the event was staged. Around that time, MLB had started looking for unique places to hold games.
Five years went by. Caldwell then received a call saying executives from MLB headquarters were in the area conducting business with Appalachian League teams and they wanted to look around the racetrack. Caldwell gladly obliged.
During the tour, one BMS manager spoke up and said jokingly, 'You know, we could put a baseball diamond inside here. It would fit.'
There was stunned silence when an MLB exec replied, 'You know what? We've explored that.'
'The driving force behind our ideation phase of looking for new events is always trying to find a diversified offering year over year,' says MLB's Senior VP of Global Events Jeremiah Yolkut. 'We want to bring attention to baseball outside of the 81 home games that all of our clubs play.
'Bristol checked a lot of boxes for us,' he continues. 'Number one, it achieves the commissioner's goal of playing games in states that don't get them all the time. Also, is there a fan base that would be interested in a game there?'
Once it was decided to bring a game to this facility, there was the problem of logistics. Just because MLB wanted to play a game in Bristol, how do they pull it off? After all, this will end up being 'the most complex field build that we've ever had,' notes Yolkut.
While Cook is enjoying the fact that this project is the closest to his home in Roanoke that MLB has ever planned an event, he still knows this is going to be a challenge getting everything installed in between events already scheduled at the venue.
The heat and long days in Bristol have been a challenge for the Brightview crew. He likened this project to preparing the Olympic Stadium in London for MLB's games in 2019, 2023 and 2024. He faced similarly tight schedules there, and in fact is utilizing some of the same fencing and other materials used for those London Series contests. But 'this project is bigger. It was only 4,000 tons of gravel over there.'
He felt better after the artificial turf had been rolled over all of that gravel. 'It's always great to see the green side up,' he chuckles.
The surface being used is made by AstroTurf. It's the same material installed at Rogers Centre in Toronto when the Blue Jays made major renovations two years ago. Most jewel games have been on grass, but the very temporary nature of this year's event, plus the gravel underneath, makes a natural surface impossible.
Creating a 'spectacle'
There's been a noticeable progression in MLB's one-off jewel events, beginning with 2016's salute to the military by playing a regular-season game at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. This was followed by games at the College World Series park in Omaha, the minor league park in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, while the Little League World Series was happening across the river, the 'Field of Dreams' movie site in Iowa and last year's tribute to the Negro Leagues at Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama.
'We're always looking for our next event to be bigger and to shine a light on the sport,' explains Yolkut. 'We knew that what they do around racing and also the football game they hosted, Bristol knows how to put on big events.
'We knew Bristol could create a spectacle.'
To make the scheduling work around this spectacle, the Reds and Braves face off in Cincinnati on July 31 at 7:10 and Aug. 1 at 12:40. Then it's off to the hills of East Tennessee for the night game.
A rare off-day is scheduled the following day. This is to permit a game if Aug. 2 is washed out.
Progressing
There's also been a progression in the entertainment and game-day experience presented prior to the games in these jewel events.
The first at Fort Bragg was basically the game itself between the Braves and Marlins, and that was it. Last year, MLB scheduled three days of events in Alabama, starting with a minor league game, followed by numerous tributes to the recently-passed Willie Mays, a celebrity softball game, and a stunning musical performance by Jon Batiste that rivaled a Super Bowl halftime show.
And all of this was before the first pitch of the Cardinals-Giants game had been thrown.
This year in Eastern Tennessee, the festivities will start the day before the MLB game. The Appalachian League (a college summer league and a 'partner league' of MLB) will conduct its championship game in its showcase ballpark in Johnson City at 7 p.m. on Aug. 1.
Boyd Sports, owners of the Class AA Knoxville Smokies, possesses five franchises in the Appy League. 'Considering we own half the teams in the circuit, we'd love for fans coming to Bristol to also attend the league championship game the day before,' says Boyd's president Chris Allen. 'TVA Credit Union Ballpark is a really cool place, and it's only about 20 minutes from the racetrack.'
During the day Saturday, those with tickets will find an enormous amount to do in and around the speedway. If you've ever been to a NASCAR race, you know there is as much going on outside the seating bowl as within.
'We've really leaned into the operations of how this venue works,' says Michael Kinard of Populous, MLB's longtime event planner for special games like this. 'It's such a massive venue, but we didn't want to change too much when we put an MLB thumbprint on it. As you walk around outside, you'll be able to stop at (various) fan activations.'
There are smaller stages with performers outside, plus sponsors have tents and stands showing off their wares. And there will be no shortage of merchandise that mixes baseball and racing themes.
Adjacent to the main stadium is the Bristol Dragway, the quarter-mile drag racing track that has as busy a schedule of races as the stock car track a few feet away. While drag races aren't scheduled this weekend, fans would no doubt enjoy a 40-yard dash pitting the Reds' Elly De La Cruz against Atlanta's 'The Freeze' mascot.
Once batting practice is concluded, those inside the massive seating bowl will be entertained by two of the biggest names in music – country legend Tim McGraw (whose father, Tug, racked up 180 saves during his big-league career) and hip-hop star Pitbull.
MLB has hinted that the player introductions will be handled with a true NASCAR feel as the Braves and Reds are raced around the track.
Going really big
Bristol Motor Speedway and its neighbor to the east in Martinsville are the two shortest racetracks on the regular NASCAR schedule, both coming in at about half a mile. Even though BMS is a 'short track,' you won't find it the least bit undersized when you step inside.
For one thing, it's rare for a racetrack to have its grandstands completely encircle the track, with roughly the same number of rows all around. Imagine the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. And if your ticket is for the top row, you'll be watching the action from the equivalent of the roof of an eight-story building.
You'll also have 189 very steep steps to reach your seat, as there are almost 100 rows of seats in the venue nicknamed The Last Great Colosseum.
'Many people are going to be further away from the field, so we're trying to make sure that we're doing things in different locations in the venue so you'll still feel connected,' notes Brian O'Gara, the VP of Special Events for MLB.
If you think that it was a tight fit getting the baseball field into this 'short-track' venue, think again. Because the baseball field only occupies half of the track's infield space, 'there is so much space left for the concert stage, clubhouses, our tent village (for media and other operations), concessions, bathrooms and a fan plaza,' explains Yolkut. 'All of these have always been outside the ballparks at the jewel events, but now there's space for all of that on the inside.'
If you're wondering why the baseball field isn't situated in the very center of the racetrack's infield so there would be grandstands on all sides, there's a very, very large reason: Colossus.
Colossus is the massive video board and sound system that is suspended over the very center of the racetrack's infield. The 30-foot-tall screens on the 700-ton beast can be seen from all points in the grandstand. However, it's only 155 feet above the level of the infield. That's higher than the lowest catwalk at Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, but far too low to hang over the middle of a playing field.
So the solution here was to place the baseball field on one end of the infield, with the outfield fence hugging what would be Turns 1 and 2 of the track. Colossus then hangs roughly over the third-base dugout.
Yolkut notes that the placement of the stage where McGraw and Pitbull will perform opens up the opportunity to promote tickets that would ordinarily have limited or no visibility of the baseball action. With reserved seats almost sold out, 'perhaps there are fans who still want to come to the venue and experience the fan zone, see the concert, watch the game on Colossus, but just not have a traditional seat.'
All told, attendance should be about 85,000 for MLB's first regular-season game in the state of Tennessee, which will set an MLB attendance record.
Says Yolkut, 'We knew we could go really big at Bristol.'
Telling the story
Yolkut notes that the Fox TV network 'had a great interest in this event. They know the venue because they've done races there. They also love the idea of a spectacle, a show that they could put on TV in the middle of the summer on a Saturday night.'
Perhaps most important if you're watching from home, 'Fox really knows how to tell a story. One of the benefits of them as a partner is that they really know how to bring to life what's happening in the venue.'
Never was this truer than last year when MLB honored the players of the Negro Leagues at America's oldest ballpark, Rickwood Field in Birmingham.
As for the batters hoping to hit a long drive onto the racetrack in Turn 2, the dimensions aren't that different from big-league norms. It's 330 feet down each foul line, 400 to center, 385 to left center, and 375 to right center, where the wall is a little higher because there's a building that couldn't be moved.
'It's just striking to see that baseball field plopped down in the middle of this half-mile track,' says Caldwell. 'It's going to be one of those memorable events that you'll be glad you were here. It will be a spectacle.'
When Dale Earnhardt Jr. won the 2004 night race on this track, he exclaimed a phrase that has echoed through the surrounding valleys ever since: 'It's Bristol, baby!'
Expect to hear those three words on Fox's telecast. Often.
Cook knows the clock is ticking as soon as the last out is made in the game.
'We'll be packing up and getting everything out just as quick as we can, so they can get back to racing here,' he says.
And part of the 'everything' to be removed is many, many tons of gravel. And that's no cliché, baby.