BRISTOL, Tenn.—Imagine hearing a call something like this on Saturday: “Matt Olson steps to the plate. He’s batting .261 this season and is the Braves’ top home run producer. There’s the wind-up and the pitch. A deep shot to right field. That dinger is out of here and onto the speedway track.”
Wait, what? The speedway track? No, our hypothetical call isn’t mixing metaphors. That scenario could happen Aug. 2 when the Cincinnati Reds take on the Atlanta Braves in the MLB Speedway Classic at the Bristol Motor Speedway.
For the game, Major League Baseball has transformed the iconic speedway—host to some of the biggest NASCAR races—into a world-class baseball field with the help of BrightView, the league’s official field consultant, and its partners BaAM Production and architecture and design firm Populous. Bringing in 18,000 tons of gravel to level the field and 124,000 square feet of AstroTurf, BrightView converted the speedway’s infield into a full-scale baseball field.
With 85,000 tickets sold, the game may be not only the most well-attended regular season contest in MLB history but also the first MLB game ever played in Tennessee.
For those not traveling to the Volunteer State, however, Fox Sports will cover the game. Televised on Fox stations and affiliates nationwide, it is set for 7:15 p.m. ET.
A Fresh Perspective
Fox Sports has a long history of covering races from the speedway, but preparing to cover an MLB game there required a fresh perspective and a good bit of imagination, Fox Sports Vice President of Field Operations and Engineering Brad Cheney said.
“The first time you go to this place, there are construction cones where home plate, first base, second and third will be,” he said. “You’re standing there trying to imagine things. The stands are going to come up 30 feet. What does that look like? That’s not a tape measure you can hold up.”
Fox Sports began visiting Bristol in the spring of 2023 to plan its coverage and technical layout. Since then, it’s been back five times on planning missions, the most recent of which was two weeks ago, after the MLB All-Star Game in Atlanta, to confirm camera placements and relocate anything that needed to be moved, he said.
“It’s a super-collaborative process over multiple years to make something like this happen. The beauty of it is because we’ve done it now three times—this being our third—we’ve got a great idea of what we need, and we’re able to collaborate a lot better to make this happen in a shorter time span than in the past,” said Cheney, referring to the 2021 and 2022 Field of Dreams games.
Fox Sports, which will produce the game in 1080p HD HDR with a 5.1 surround mix and make a 4K up-res available, relied on computer models of the speedway-ballpark design created by MLB and BaAM Productions to figure out camera positions, walkways and how to move everything that must be moved for the production, he said.
Pointing to the third-base line camera and high-first-base camera positions for the game, Cheney said they were located to capture the unique spectacle of playing the game at the speedway.
“The camera looking down third base line is well up into the grandstand,” Cheney said. “It’s a much different shot angle for us and will help us shoot so many other things in that stadium setup because it’s so large.
“That’s one of those cameras—and high first as well—that are in spots that aren’t normal for a regular major league ballpark but are going to provide the shots we need for the game and also provide us a lot of other coverage throughout the racetrack to show everybody how many people are really there and feel that excitement.”
In all, Fox Sports has deployed 40 cameras for the game, including four super slo-motion cameras, Ump Cam at home plate, drone cameras on Beverly Hills Aerials platforms and a helicopter-mounted camera.
There are also a couple of camera deployments specially designed for the game. Fox Sports has worked with MLB on a remote-control car camera “that’s going to move around the field a bit,” in Cheney’s words, as well as cameras mounted on the golf carts used to shuttle a pitcher from the bullpen to the mound.
“I’m sure we all remember those golf carts from years past. We’re going to doctor them up with in-car cameras just like you’d have at a NASCAR race,” he said, noting the hat tip to the surroundings adds “a little bit of fun” to the transport.
Sound Decisions
For audio, Fox Sports is deploying 20 field mics and 14 microphones on players and coaches. As it’s a regular-season game, there will be no in-game conversations between the players and announcers Joe Davis and John Smoltz. Rather, those mics will be used simply to convey the experience of players who will be hearing the roar of 85,000 fans for the first time.
“We’ve heard that roar there for 25 years with NASCAR, but that’s also with a whole bunch of cars at 150 dBs running around the track and you’re still hearing the crowd,” Cheney said. “But baseball is pretty quiet. When that crowd rips up, I don’t know what we’re going to get here.”
Fox Sports chief baseball audio engineer Joe Carpenter and his team have developed concepts for audio production of the game, but it will likely take an inning to determine how best to handle the crowd noise. “We’ll start small and then build it up and put those pieces in,” said Cheney.
“Obviously, the on-field mics are going to be the same [as normal games], and it’s going to be a great sound from the field itself. But it's that next level of sound [that must be determined],” he said. “How do we best capture the sound of everyone from the start-finish line, all the way through turns one and two and back across the back stretch? How do you capture all that sound? How do you put it into the broadcast? How do you make sure that it doesn't overpower one side or the other?”
Cheney has thought a lot about what it will be like to be on the field Saturday and tried to imagine capturing that experience and conveying it to viewers at home. “I stood in the dugout a week and a half ago and looked up at those stands,” he said. “When that place is full, it is going to be unreal.”
