MLB Speedway Classic

The MLB Speedway Classic is a major league game that was played on a temporary baseball field erected in the infield of the famous Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, TN. It was originally scheduled for August 2, 2025 but was completed the next day due to adverse weather.

It was the first regular season MLB game to be played in the state of Tennessee; there were a lot of Negro League games played in the state, in both Nashville and Memphis until the 1940s that are now recognized as major league games, but no teams from either the National League or American League had played there before. The game featured a match-up between the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds with the Reds listed as the home team. It represented the latest iteration of an effort by MLB to stage games in non-traditional settings. Previous such games have included the Fort Bragg Game (in 2016), the Field of Dreams Game (in 2021 and 2022), the Rickwood Field Game (in 2024) and the annual MLB Little League Classic (first staged in 2017).

Early indications were that the game would break the all-time attendance record for a regular season game, as over 85,000 tickets had been sold by the end of July; the previous paid attendance record was 84,587, set on September 12, 1954 at Cleveland Stadium. Indeed, when all was said and done, the official attendance was 91,032, obliterating the previous record. However, things did not go as planned as after the opening ceremonies were held, rain began to fall and the start of play was delayed by two hours and 17 minutes. The two teams then took the field, but were not even able to complete the 1st inning before play was suspended again with Cincinnati leading 1-0, to resume the next day.

Things went better on August 3rd, with the game now an afternoon affair (the start time the previous day was at 7:20 pm). The Braves roared back with three runs in the top of the 2nd inning on a home run by Eli White off reliever Brent Suter, and while the Reds were able to score once in the bottom of the inning, they never managed to close the gap, with Atlanta scoring an insurance run in the 7th on another homer by White to end up 4-2 winners. The weather problems wrecked havoc with both teams' pitching plans: the Reds' starter, Chase Burns, only pitched the 1st inning, while the Braves' AJ Smith-Shawver never took the mound, being shut down by the first rain delay. It was reliever Austin Cox who ended up making the start, but he lasted just a third of an inning before the game was suspended. When play resumed the following day, both teams had new pitchers come out, Hurston Waldrep for the Braves, who ended up pitching 5 1/3 innings and earning the win, and Suter for the Reds. White, the game's hero with his two long balls, was only in Atlanta's starting line-up because regular right fielder Ronald Acuña Jr. had just been placed on the injured list with a calf strain a few days earlier. For his part, Waldrep had not even made the trip to Bristol on August 2nd, and was told shortly after midnight that a driver would pick him up at 5 AM the next morning in Columbus, OH, where he was expected to make a start for the Gwinnett Stripers, to make a five-hour drive so that he could pitch that afternoon for the Braves.

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