In recent years, Major League Baseball has experimented with regular season games in an Iowa cornfield and a former Negro Leagues venue, each to great acclaim.
For its next trick, MLB is bringing new meaning to the word “infield.”
According to a report Tuesday in The Athletic, MLB is set to announce Bristol Motor Speedway on Friday as the site of a 2025 game between the Cincinnati Reds and Atlanta Braves. The Tennessee track, a half-mile oval, hosts two NASCAR events every year.
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MLB declined to comment for the report.
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Bristol Motor Speedway opened in 1961, making it older than most current MLB venues.
Known as “The Last Great Colosseum,” Bristol Motor Speedway bills itself as “a versatile multi-use venue that hosts major auto races, football games, concerts and many other captivating events.”
Unlike the “Field of Dreams” game in Aug. 2021 and the Rickwood Field game earlier this year, Bristol is already a modernized venue replete with the usual 21st-century trappings fans are accustomed to: “man cave suites,” drinking areas, and a state-of-the art sound system.
It’s also the record-holder for the largest spectator attendance at a college football game — 159,990 for a Tennessee-Virginia Tech game in 2016. Capacity for NASCAR events is 146,000.
What will be fascinating is how MLB adapts the dimensions of the venue for baseball. Events at ovular coliseums are rare. The Los Angeles Dodgers played their first home games at the Los Angeles Coliseum because Dodger Stadium had not yet been built when the franchise relocated from Brooklyn.
In order to accommodate a baseball field, a 40-foot high net was erected above the Coliseum’s short left-field wall. Its distance from home plate: 250 feet.
The Bristol track has a long history of adapting to different sports. According to The Athletic:
In addition to building a football field inside Bristol to host the Volunteers and Hokies, (CEO Marcus) Smith also brought dirt in to completely cover Bristol’s concrete racing surface in 2021 so that his track could host NASCAR’s first premier series race on dirt since 1970. That experiment ended after three years.
The Braves and Reds are close enough to Bristol geographically that perhaps their fans can make the event the highest-attended MLB game on the calendar next year. The venue is certainly large enough. Perhaps the intrigue, will be too.
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