BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Braves radio play-by-play announcer Ben Ingram knew exactly what he wanted to do upon learning the team would be playing a game at Bristol Motor Speedway.
"I remember the first thing that came out of my mouth,” Ingram said. “I said, 'I don’t care what y’all are doing, I’m going to that game as Richard Petty.'”
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True to his word, Ingram arrived for the 2025 MLB Speedway Classic on Saturday bearing a strong resemblance to Petty.
Enhancing his costume was the fact that his radio booth partner Darren O’Day was wearing a vintage race car driving suit that had been previously worn by an unidentified driver or pit crew member.
"I looked for a while and I found this suit that I liked because of all the sponsors,” O’Day said. “I can’t remember what rain delay it was early in the season. But we were sitting waiting for the game to start and I was like, ‘All right, I’m buying it.’
"We committed to it and here we are.”
Ingram ordered a decorative band for the cowboy hat he already owned, and he also bought a replica of Petty’s vintage STP jacket. He began focusing on the mustache around the All-Star break.
"This was supposed to arrive the day before we left for this trip [on July 23],” Ingram said. “So, I had someone send it overnight to our hotel in Dallas. I was kind of nervous because I didn’t know if it was going to show up in time. I was like, 'I've gotta have this thing.'"
“Yeah, you couldn’t leave me hanging out to dry,” O’Day said.
Ingram has been part of the Braves’ radio team since 2010 and he has been the primary play-by-play man since 2020.
O’Day pitched for the Braves as recently as 2022 and is in his third season as one of the team’s part-time radio analysts.
But they both got a lot of odd looks from Braves players, including Saturday’s starting pitcher Spencer Strider, who was the first to see the two get on the team bus en route to Saturday’s game against the Reds.
“Everybody has kind of double and triple-taked, because they didn’t know who we were,” Ingram said.