Major League Baseball is preparing for a record-setting game between the Atlanta Braves and the Cincinnati Reds — the 2025 MLB Speedway Classic. This game won’t be played at either the Great American Ball Park in Ohio or Truist Park in Atlanta; instead, these teams will meet at The Bristol Motor Speedway, a NASCAR track with seating capacity for 85,000 fans.
According to NBC News, not only did the MLB undertake a massive project converting the Bristol Motor Speedway into a baseball diamond, but they did it in 32 days. Starting on June 4, 2025, part of the speedway’s infield was demolished. Then, 18,000 tons of gravel, 124,000 square feet of artificial turf, 300 tons of clay and 415 additional lighting fixtures were delivered to complete the transformation.
“Batting tunnels, dugouts, backstop net, batter’s eye, bullpens, foul poles; none of this is here, right? So all that has to be brought in,” said Murray Cook, president of Brightview Sports, a consulting firm that works with the MLB on fields and ballparks.
The 2025 Speedway Classic will throw its first pitch tomorrow, August 2, 2025. It will be the first MLB game to be played in Tennessee and the largest crowd on record since the 1954 showdown between Cleveland and the New York Yankees.
“It’s the commissioner’s office plan to grow the game around the world and to take it to places where, you know, you don’t have a major league team,” Cook said. Recently, the MLB has also brought games to Birmingham, Al., for special tributes to the Negro League, and even to North Carolina’s Fort Bragg. Other games have been held in Olympic venues across the world, including London and Korea.
Cook told NBC News he expects the teardown of the newly constructed baseball field to take 15 days. Since most of the materials will have only been used for one game, the field will then be donated to Eastern Tennessee State University.
