And a win would be nice!
State Street runs right through downtown Bristol, in doing so dividing the twin towns of Bristol, Tennessee and Bristol, Virginia. It’s a bit of a hike to get there from Cincinnati, but that’s precisely where the Reds will serve as the ‘home’ team on Saturday as they take on the Atlanta Braves in the 2025 MLB Speedway Classic.
They’ll play ball here, at the Bristol Motor Speedway, with the grandstands of one of NASCAR’s most iconic tracks tweaked just enough to allow an expected attendance of over 85,000 fans to show up.
Photo by Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images
The track is obviously no stranger to hosting sporting events, but that includes sporting events other than just racing. Way back in 1961, the track hosted an NFL game between Washington and Philadelphia, while 2013 saw the Tennessee Volunteers defeat the Virginia Tech Hokies in a college football game, too.
How it plays as a Major League Baseball park remains to be seen, but we’ll find out today at 7:15 PM ET. MLB Network and FOX national will have the coverage, while fireballing righties Chase Burns and Spencer Strider will do the starting for their respective clubs.
While the pomp and circumstance of this game is obviously nice to be a part of, the reality is that the Cincinnati Reds need wins like nothing else. The scraped out a 3-2 victory over the Braves yesterday to wrap their Great American Ball Park homestand, and at 58-53 they sit as the first team out in the National League Wild Card race. Because the stupid St. Louis Cardinals did no favors to the Reds in their loss to the San Diego Padres, the Reds remain 3.5 games back of the Friars for the final NL playoff spot with some 51 games to go.