When Larry Carrier opened what would become Bristol Motor Speedway in 1961, this image never crossed his mind: an MLB player standing at home plate near the racing surface waiting on a fastball from the mound 60 feet, six inches away.
Baseball? At Bristol?
Why not? The place built for stock car racing also has hosted professional football, college football, concerts, worship services and boxing, among other events.
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With the MLB Speedway Classic presented by BuildSubmarines.com, baseball officially joined the ranks Saturday evening, where the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds, two historic National League teams, locked horns for a one-of-a-kind battle at the “Last Great Colosseum.”
The game was a first for MLB in the state of Tennessee, and it attracted a crowd of 85,000-plus, a baseball attendance record that surpassed the mark established more than 70 years prior, when Cleveland Stadium hosted 84,587 on Sept. 12, 1954.
Jeff Hayes was one of the Thunder Valley attendees. A Nashville resident, he brought two friends and two cousins with him to what he said was his first MLB game. Like many — perhaps most — in the crowd, he had never visited Bristol.
“I wanted to see the game but almost as much to see this place,” Hayes said. “I’ve seen it on TV a lot, but you don’t get the full picture until you’re here. An amazing place. I don’t know how they put a full-scale baseball field in here, but it looks great.”
Years of planning for the game, the latest in a series designed to spread MLB’s reach, culminated Saturday, despite rain factoring into the equation. Showers fell several times during the day, and the start of the contest was delayed two hours and 17 minutes by a downpour that started during pregame ceremonies.
The first pitch was finally thrown at 9:41 p.m. ET, but rain intensified, and the game was suspended in the bottom of the first inning with the Reds leading, 1-0. The game resumed Sunday at 1 p.m. ET, with the Braves prevailing, 4-2.
Even as jerseys were traded for ponchos due to Mother Nature, fans enjoyed plenty of NASCAR/MLB crossover, as did the athletes themselves.
Reds pitcher Andrew Abbott wore a modified version of a Rusty Wallace Miller High Life uniform onto the field in pregame. Reds catcher Tyler Stephenson sported “Talladega Nights”-themed catching gear. Before the first pitch, the players were paraded around the 0.533-mile track in pickup trucks, NASCAR-style. Several NASCAR sponsors, including BuildSubmarines.com, are also MLB sponsors, so the prominent display of its logo seemed doubly appropriate.
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Although the crowd seemed to be heavily oriented toward baseball — with Reds and Braves jerseys aplenty across the grandstands — some fans wore apparel representing both sides of the coin, creating a unique blend for two separate pastimes.
Celebrities in attendance included Hall of Famers Johnny Bench, one of the Reds’ all-time greats, and Chipper Jones, who held down third base for the Braves for most of two decades. Bench, 77 years old and a baseball immortal, looked like he still might cut you down stealing second base.
NASCAR drivers joined in on the spectacle. Richard Childress Racing’s Kyle Busch, dressed in Reds gear, and Hendrick Motorsports’ Chase Elliott, in an Atlanta jersey, arrived from Iowa Speedway to participate in opening ceremonies.
A few minutes before the ceremonial first pitches were thrown, heavy rain began falling, bringing the white infield tarp out once more. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Who’ll Stop the Rain” was played over the PA system, but none of NASCAR’s track-drying equipment was put in play. The grounds crew spent more time on the basepaths than the players.
The baseball field was the result of weeks of toil by dozens of workers. Adjacent to the diamond were the other niceties needed for an MLB game — first-class clubhouse facilities, meeting rooms, training rooms and batting cages.
“My first thought is I can’t believe they did all this for one game,” Braves first baseman Matt Olson said. “To be able to set all this up, get a playing surface ready, the stands up in order to have the proper viewing. It’s pretty incredible.”
The planning took years. The idea first crossed someone’s desk in 2021, and it wasn’t a massive surprise because Bristol has hosted other major events and has one of the world’s biggest seating capacities.
“Major League Baseball had some executives in town visiting some of the Appalachian (collegiate summer league) teams,” Jerry Caldwell, president of Bristol, said. “We let them know we’d love to give them a tour of the race track. They came over, and it occurred to somebody that, hey, you know, we could fit a baseball diamond in here.
“We had batted it around before (so to speak), but we dug it back up. It led to some pretty quick conversations, and a bigger group of people came down to check it out. Then it went to engineers. So, it was years’ worth of conversations and planning. We had to make sure it was really something we could do because we don’t ever want to take our eyes off the ball (so to speak, again) of what we are, a motorsports facility. We can accommodate these other things, but then we have to know that we can get back to what our core business is.”
That “core business” could pick up, thanks to the baseball game. Although rain dampened what should have been a spectacular evening, thousands were exposed to the speedway for the first time. More than half of the tickets sold went to addresses new to the Bristol customer list.
Caldwell said there were some key observers at the speedway Saturday night to watch the game, “with the idea that we might bring some other major events here.” There was a rumor between dugouts that NHL representatives were looking on.
So, what’s next for Bristol? Soccer? Swimming? Springsteen?
“Just call me,” said Caldwell, smiling.
