Before the lights come on at the Bristol Motor Speedway in September for the track's annual Night Race, the “Last Great Colosseum” will host the first-ever Major League Baseball game played in Tennessee on Saturday, August 2. MLB says the track should break the league’s all-time attendance record for a regular-season game, with over 85,000 fans expected to come watch the Atlanta Braves take on Cincinnati Reds.
Getting all those fans into the stadium is something Bristol knows well, but setting up the 64-year-old track for baseball is something MLB has spent years planning and months building.
“It was really hard,” Populous associate principal Michael Kinard tells Road & Track about inserting a MLB diamond into the infield of the track and creating the right environment for fans. “We’ve been [planning] this for the better part of two years now. When you first look at it, there’s a massive track and a massive amount of space. You think it should be a cakewalk.”
It wasn't.
The first order of business came in siting the field. The mega-sized 127-ton videoboard led that decision: it sits so low, it needed to be kept in foul territory, since a ball could very well hit it. “That drove how we angled the field,” Kinard says. With home plate at the start/finish line, the first-base line heads toward turn one. With a structure in what would become right field, crews had to tear down part of a building so the regular dimensions of a baseball field would fit; the foul lines are 330 feet, alleys sit at 375 (right) and 385 (left) feet, and straight-away center field is 400 feet. Center looks toward turn two and the entire left field side faces the backstretch.
To bring fans closer to the action, MLB placed roughly 3500 seats in the infield, mostly along the left-field side so as to not block sight lines from the uniquely steep bowl of seating. Left field also houses plenty of back-of-house needs, from clubhouses to concessions to a concert stage for the pre-game lineup of Tim McGraw, Pitbull and Jake Owen.
Jeremiah Yolkut, Major League Baseball senior vice president of global events, tells Road & Track that when you look down the right-field line, you get an immediate feel for how banked the track is. “When the ball flies out and hits the track, there is a likelihood it will bounce back over the wall because of the angle,” he says.
Getting the baseball field on the infield wasn’t a simple matter, as crews needed to elevate the playing surface to ensure ideal sight lines. That’s why there’s nearly 18,000 tons of gravel fill laid beneath the AstroTurf and clay.
“Converting a high-banked oval racetrack into a world-class baseball field isn’t something you do every day,” Murray Cook, president of BrightView Sports Turf, says in a statement. “This project pushed us to get a little creative while maintaining Bristol Motor Speedway’s iconic charm.”
Pit walls were removed, along with select signage and lights (275 new light fixtures were added) and the Sunoco fuel tanks. “The banking of the racetrack’s infield area created some engineering hurdles,” Cook says. Crews laid 124,000 square feet of AstroTurf’s Diamond Series — the same field used by the Blue Jays in Toronto’s Rogers Centre — and 340 tons of clay, along with 60-foot-tall foul poles. It took over 15 tractor trailers to bring in the AstroTurf.
“We’re coming down a nearly 30% incline with heavy equipment,” Joey Alexander, general manager of AstroTurf’s southeast region, says in a statement. “Tight quarters. Limited access. It’s one of the most complex installs we’ve ever tackled.”
Raising the field helped with views... and the field. “Because of the way the slope of the track is, we had to get it at a certain height to ensure the drainage system would handle any water and the seats would have the right angle to view the field,” Yolkut says. “We wanted to maximize the number of viewable seats that could see the diamond from various points.”
The steep bank of the track carries over with a quick rise in the grandstand. “You get pretty high quickly in the seats, so you feel close to the field,” Kinard says, adding they tried to show off the track as much as possible. “The stadium itself is set up to have pretty amazing views. As you move higher, I would argue you have such a cool perspective — not just of the diamond, but around the track. There are even cooler views than what we had imagined.”
Yolkut agrees. “No matter where you are sitting, you will be able to see a ball hit out or a player making a great play,” he says. “It is that intimate.”
Throughout the event, NASCAR and MLB intertwine. “The look and feel is one of the most important things,” Yokut says. “You want to have the flavor of the venue you are at. That’s why we’re here. NASCAR has made it iconic.” Throughout the evening, the two worlds will collide: MLB is keeping plenty of Bristol’s historic signage; players will arrive to the field after riding a lap around the track; there’s a “victory lane” celebration planned for the winning team with a Speedway Classic trophy presentation and NASCAR-themed fan engagement plays throughout the night.
“It is going to feel very NASCAR,” Yolkut says. “We are blending baseball with NASCAR.”
Todd Barnes, Populous senior principal, tells Road & Track they’ve been working with MLB for over 20 years, and this is going to be one of the most impressive events in that history. “This event right here,” he says, “is on the grandest scale of all of them.”
When it’s all done, though, maybe the biggest challenge remains: clearing it all out—including all that gravel — within three weeks. After all, Bristol needs to get back to what made the track famous: racing cars.
You Might Also Like
Comments