Bristol Motor Speedway is ready to make dual history by hosting the first Major League Baseball game in Tennessee, and in front of a record crowd.
The stage – or in this case the racetrack – has been set for the biggest crowd for a regular season baseball game in league history at Saturday night’s MLB Speedway Classic between the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds.
“The way the venue looks really is something that you can put on paper, but you really can’t get a true vision of it until you actually put grandstands on the infield of the track, and you put 3,500 seats in the middle of 87,000 seats,” Jeremiah Yolkut, MLB’s senior vice president of global events, said Friday.
“Those things just don’t become a reality until you actually see them.”
What fans will see Saturday is a baseball diamond tucked inside the infield of the half-mile bullring at Bristol. A temporary grandstand wraps around both sidelines with a press box at the top. The track’s Colossus videoboard hovers over foul territory along the third base line. Any balls hit off Colossus will be foul.
[Related: MLB Speedway Classic At Bristol: NASCAR Drivers Reimagined As Baseball Players]
Three-time All-Star Sean Casey played in a March 2008 exhibition between the Red Sox and Dodgers with 115,300 at the Los Angeles Coliseum for the largest crowd ever to see a baseball game. Casey said Friday that the energy from the fans that day was “incredible.”
“I think the Reds and the Braves taking this field with 90,000-plus people at Bristol Motor Speedway, the energy for this game is going to be off the charts,” Casey said after spending time on this field broadcasting with MLB Network.
MLB didn’t try to top that 2008 mark for attendance, blocking off seats in Turns 3 and 4 at the track with a racing capacity of 146,000. Officials announced Monday that more than 85,000 tickets had been sold to top the previous paid attendance of 84,587 set Sept. 12, 1954, when Cleveland Stadium hosted the New York Yankees.
Yolkut said a difference between now and the 2008 game is this is a regular-season game and not an exhibition. This game wasn’t about simply packing people in to set a record and telling some fans to just watch the game on the videoboard.
Bristol Motor Speedway had to be completely remade in order to fit a baseball field, as well as the appropriate MLB brandin. (Photo by Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
“We thought it was important to have as minimal obstruction seats as possible and to make sure that the fans coming were going to have a great experience,” Yolkut said.
The Reds held off the Braves 3-2 in Cincinnati on Friday afternoon.
That gave everyone at Bristol time to prepare for Saturday’s spectacle. The teams have separate clubhouses, with the Reds behind the baseball field’s grandstand and the Braves just past the right field fence next to the track wall.
A few miles away, the Braves threw a watch party at the Bristol Paramount Theater for Friday’s game. Admission was free with souvenirs available and the concession stand open with the big screen view.
To make sure fans arrive early Saturday, MLB also has a plan.
The MLB Fan Zone just outside the speedway’s towering walls features a 110-foot Ferris wheel, food trucks, pitching tunnels and batting cages and team mascots. Tim McGraw and Pitbull will headline a big pre-game concert inside Bristol.
A flyover is planned, and Chipper Jones and Johnny Bench will handle the first pitch.
Much more has changed in the infield besides… the infield. (Photo by Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
The chance to see history had fans arriving Thursday to take advantage of Bristol’s campgrounds. A group of Braves’ fans came from Charleston, South Carolina, and set up tents. Rich Lorenzo, 40, has been watching the Braves since he grew up in Columbus, Georgia.
“I’m super excited because here I’ve actually run Bristol in two different cars here, and it’s kind of cool to come for something other than racing,” Lorenzo said as he sat next to his tent. “So it’s a really, really amazing event to be a part of. Plus, the first Major League Baseball game in Tennessee.”
The 124,000 square feet of AstroTurf will be donated after the game to East Tennessee State University as part of MLB ‘s Better Together social responsibility initiative. ETSU has had 45 players taken in the MLB draft.
That program also held a STEM event in the infield Friday. About 60 members of the local Boys and Girls Club got to show the science and math behind hitting a baseball, running the bases or the quick reactions needed for players and NASCAR drivers.
“We also get the opportunity to invest in the community that’s hosting us,” said April Brown, MLB’s senior vice president of social responsibility. “So this is incredibly important to our MLB Together pillars because education and partnerships are key to what we want to invest in.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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