The Crane Pool Forum

mlb.com: MLB announced Friday morning that the Braves and Reds will play a regular-season game in 2025 at the historic Bristol Motor Speedway
in northeastern Tennessee on Saturday, Aug. 2, in the MLB Speedway Classic.


As MLB continues its search for unique venues for one-off games.
The choice of teams makes sense as the two cities are close to equidistant from Bristol, TN. (aprox 300 miles)
It'll be the final game of a three-game series after Thursday and Friday games in Cincy.
Sunday will be an off-day for both teams as the date will be kept open in case of a Saturday rain out.

Kinda cool

Seems odd to not put the field in the natural curve of the stadium and instead have almost no seats anywhere close to the field.

Bristol Stomp! Cool!

Serious capacity at them Nascar tracks. I got no problem with this stunt, lots of room to do some cool cross-merchandising.

Maybe the year after that, MLB could play a game at Appomattox or inside the Grand Canyon or where Woodstock was held. That last one has so many possibilities. The surviving members of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, all none of them, could play the National Anthem and baseball could pass around bad LSD during the game. Watch the Astros play in their 1970s Tequila Sunrises on acid. Oh, the colors!

WTF? This speedway has no connection to baseball and never hosted a baseball game of any kind.

Bruce Springsteen isn't a baseball player but he sold out Citifield. Tens of thousands of fans filled a football stadium to watch hockey this year. There's nothing wrong with this

So maybe next year, MLB could return the favor and have the Mets play in Madison Square Garden.

Baseball stadiums go with pop music concerts just as well as they go with hot dogs and ice cream. They've been hosting music acts ever since The Beatles were still moptops.

There's nothing wrong with it, but if they're gonna do a non-baseball venue, there are so, so many better options.

I really hope the Braves have the Beat the Freeze guy race a Nascar during the 7th inning stretch

metirish wrote: ↑Fri Aug 09, 2024 9:25 pm I really hope the Braves have the Beat the Freeze guy race a Nascar during the 7th inning stretch

The race could be the entire race track (2.5 miles?) but that would break the pace of play rules.
Actually (looking it up) Bristol is considered a 'short track' so one lap is only .533 miles.
That's right about two minutes run for 'Freeze' (who I believe was a college quarter miler) so
it would fit quite well in a between innings stunt.

Gives a whole new meaning to 'a drive up the alley'.

This could be fun!

I'd like to see them make the Rickwood Field game an annual thing.

I remember when the song Bristol stomp came out, There are (IIRC) over 25 places named Bristol in the US and people in each of them claimed the song was about them.

Later

I live a hop-skip-and-a-jump from there. I'm going!

Bristol is cool because on one side of State Street you're in Tennessee, on the other side, you're in Virginia.

I wonder if the game will be sponsored by Goody's Headache Powder?

You have to the love the baseball field inside of the track

I think this is cooler than a game in a corn field , would love to go

Other Possible Specialty One-Offs

• The Parks & Rec Classic — Yankees and Mets alternate as host team from year to year in alternating Central Park locations (North Meadow, Great Lawn, Heckscher Ballfields) hosting out-of-towners, after playing each other the first year. Future years could move the festivities to Van Cortland Park, Prospect Park, Astoria Park, Randall's Island, etc.
• The Pacific Classic — played on a sea platform, with the stands erected on aircraft carriers and destroyers anchored around the perimeter.
• Elysian Fields Classic — I realize the site is long-since paved over with asphalt and buildings, but Hoboken could do the world a favor by re-establishing the earliest-known baseball diamond in America.
• The National Parks Classic — played year to year at the foot of a glacier in Alaska, or against a backdrop of a herd of buffalo grazing well beyond the rightfield wall the Badlands, on Governor's Island in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, at the rim of The Grand Canyon, begging Francisco Álvarez to deposit a ball at the bottom. The potential for environmental degradation is enormous, but that's why smart people from The National Parks would be involved.
• The Boston Common Classic — self-explanatory!
• The Aloha Classic — baseball in Waikiki!
• The Antarctica Classic — self-explanatory!
• The Border Classic — Half the ballfield is in the United States and half is in Mexico!
• The Democracy Classic — The Nats host visiting teams from year to year on the lawn of the US Capitol. Members of Congress attend, forced to sit together in regular old seats!
• The Johnny Cash Prison Yard Classic — Folsom, Attica, Angola — the most famous prisons get a spotlight as they host MLB baseball in their prison yards. The country is reminded that these people exist, and spotlights are put on the conditions of the prisoners.
• The Peace Corps Classic — Played in developing countries that host Peace Corps missions. MLB pays for the establishment of a professional-quality park and outfits a baseball developmental program in each of these nations.

Mt. Vernon! Graceland! Dollywood! Ft. McHenry! Cape Canaveral!! Let's build some ballfields!

They should tear down the Ebbets Field Housing project, and airlift Citi Field into the suddenly vacated space. Voila! The Brooklyn Dodger Classic. Hilda will be there. And the Sym-Phony will be performing at the Rotunda. Plus Steve Cohen gets to build a brand new stadium to replace this idiotic philistinian stadium of mismatched silly parts like a bridge that has nothing to do with nothing and a gerryrigged scoreboard crammed in like an overstuffed sausage that hadda replace the absolute without a doubt ugliest scoreboard ever imagined.

batmagadanleadoff wrote: ↑Sun Aug 11, 2024 2:24 pm They should tear down the Ebbets Field Housing project, and airlift Citi Field into the suddenly vacated space. Voila! The Brooklyn Dodger Classic. Hilda will be there. And the Sym-Phony will be performing at the Rotunda. Plus Steve Cohen gets to build a brand new stadium to replace this idiotic philistinian stadium of mismatched silly parts like a bridge that has nothing to do with nothing and a gerryrigged scoreboard crammed in like an overstuffed sausage that hadda replace the absolute without a doubt ugliest scoreboard ever imagined.

Steve would manage to get the casino and sports book IN the stadium. Well, to be fair, it'd probably be the other way around. The high-roller table in LF with views of the field ala the Clevelander would be epic though.

I think it would be neat if MLB played a game each year in a minor league park, a cool one that's far from any major league team. Give people a chance to see the game up close and build the fan base. Maybe a place like Oklahoma City, the Quad Cities, Indianapolis.

I like Citi Field. I'm fortunate that I get to plan vacations around seeing games in other places, and I've been to about two-thirds of the existing ones for games or tours. I'd easily put Citi in the top five, and maybe top three. That might change when I get to do a West Coast tour. We're planning to hit Seattle next season.

I like a lot of the features they've added over the years -- the Hall of Fame, the Home Run Apple outside, the Seaver statue.

And it is spectacular at night.

Marshmallowmilkshake wrote: ↑Sun Aug 11, 2024 7:04 pm I think it would be neat if MLB played a game each year in a minor league park, a cool one that's far from any major league team. Give people a chance to see the game up close and build the fan base. Maybe a place like Oklahoma City, the Quad Cities, Indianapolis.

Wait until you hear about the Athletics.

They do they that every year at the LittleLeague World Series

This year it’s Yankees and Tigers