Speedway Classic delivers baseball thrills in iconic setting

BRISTOL, Tenn. -- Nobody disliked a rain delay -- and yet handled it in a way we can all appreciate -- more than Charlie Brown. No matter how hard the rain was coming down, and rain always seemed to be coming down in Peanuts strips, Charlie forever believed it was going to stop any minute now, and they would soon get back to the game. “This is just a drizzle,” he would say, as the water line began to rise to his knees, still standing on the mound, ready to pitch. That’s baseball, right there.

The rain delays that plagued the MLB Speedway Classic on Saturday night were discouraging to anyone who was there for the spectacle. That’s particularly true considering just how close the game came to starting on time. It’s accurate to say the game featured a two-hour-and-17-minute delay, but that doesn’t really capture it. I mean, we were all set. Tim McGraw had finished his pregame concert. The F/A-18 Super Hornets had flown over during the national anthem. Players from both teams had been driven around the track, and the starting lineups had been introduced, with each player running onto the field to fireworks. Chipper Jones and Johnny Bench, along with NASCAR drivers Kyle Busch and Chase Elliott, had even thrown out the ceremonial first pitch. The adopted home team Reds were ready to jog onto the field. It was all happening.

After all that: Then the rains came. An estimated 91,000-plus tickets were sold for the game, and I have to tell you: Almost all of those people stayed for the entire delay. And when the game returned, they made themselves heard. When the grounds crew came on to roll off the tarp, there was an instant deafening roar from the crowd in appreciation, a sound so loud and so sudden that it made you jump in your seat. When Chase Burns threw the first pitch to Jurickson Profar, the grateful fans let loose a burst of applause that boomed and rattled around the stadium. It turns out: 91,000 or so fans screaming at once creates quite the racket. Because they were, indeed, still there. They had the Charlie Brown mentality. This is just a drizzle.

Alas: As you saw, the game that night was not long for this world. But that’s baseball, too: Rain, disappointment, nothing quite going to plan … and yet still the hope that the next day gives, that you can go out there again and this time it will be better.

On Sunday, it was. In front of a still enormous crowd, the Reds and Braves restarted their game beneath skies that, while not exactly sunny necessarily, were at least no longer dumping buckets of water on everyone. And those fans were treated to what they showed up for in the first place: An entertaining baseball game played in a place where a baseball game had never been played before.

It was definitely fun, and unique to the environ. Eli White’s three-run homer in the top of the second introduced the home run pace car to the universe, as well as Braves mascot Blooper rolling himself down the sloped track in celebration. It has always been fun to watch kids scramble for home run balls; to see them do it after the ball has hit a NASCAR track, bounced up and over the protective catch fence and landed among a gaggle of kids who just happened to be walking by that spot at that particular moment is a spectacle I won’t soon forget.

Nor will I forget the loudest sound of the day, when Profar hit a triple into the right-field gap in the seventh inning, reminding everyone yet again that there’s nothing more exciting in baseball than a triple.

The fan stuff was a blast too. The kinetic energy required for a T-shirt cannon to launch into the upper regions of Bristol Motor Speedway could probably power a small country for months. You got a great view of that, and all the extra curriculars, on the massive scoreboard/jumbotron hanging over the stadium, called “Colossus,” in which every highlight featured a player looming taller than Wrigley Field: Elly De La Cruz looked even more like a skyscraper than usual. I was also happy that someone, Braves designated hitter Drake Baldwin, finally hit it with a fly ball; I’d been waiting the whole game for that to happen. (The Colossus didn’t look much worse for wear afterwards.)

In the end, we got a tight, close ballgame, with some real drama in the bottom of the ninth, with the Reds getting two runners on and bringing up De La Cruz as the potentially winning run. (And wouldn’t that had been something if he had walked us off?) As it turned out, Raisel Iglesias settled down and got the final three batters to secure a 4-2 Braves win, a highlight of a disappointing season for the franchise but one their fans, and Reds fans, will remember forever regardless.

And on the whole: After waiting that long, to come so close to first pitch and have it thwarted, it was honestly just a relief to get to watch some actual baseball. And that’s what it was, after all. Even in such a special place, the sort of place we’d never seen a baseball game before and may never see again, in the end, it was just a crisp, taut contest between two teams who, while soaking up the atmosphere as much as the fans were, were there to play a baseball game after all. The atmosphere was unusual enough to at times feel surreal. But once it got going, the game itself was enough, and worth the wait. It always is.