August 4, 2025 • 17 mins
Tony and Austin discuss Austin's Speedway Classic experience and what the heck happened in Bristol, TN on Saturday night.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Here's the one pitch swinging, there's a shot past the
third makesman Riley that's in the left field. Here comes
but playing around third, he'll score and the Reds level one,
nothing lead. Austin Hayes putting the Reds on top.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Yeah, highlight of the weekend. Let's go, highlight of the weekend. Yeah,
it was a highlight, the highlight. It was a highlight.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Welcome back.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
It is since he three to sixty on ESPN fifteen
thirty Cincinnati Sports Station. Thanks to Skyline Chile phone lines
will be open in just a few minutes five one, three, seven, four, nine,
fifteen thirty. Look, we can get into the uh, the
x's and o's of the game itself, what the Reds
did or didn't do, or what the loss means or
ramifications you know, on what it did not really be
(00:46):
able to utilize Chase Burns in a start that he
was able to make or capitalize on any momentum that
you gained on Friday. But before all of that, I
wanted to to get into this, Austin with you, because
you were there and I I would describe some of
it as you witness some of these nightmare scenarios unfolding
that many people talked about that were able to go
(01:08):
to the Bristol Moltor Speedway for the Reds and the Braves.
Where do you even want to start with this? I
want to start?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I mean, I guess I'll just tell the whole story, yes,
and try to provide a little bit of context.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
So I've said this before.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
At first I wasn't crazy about going because I just
didn't think it would be a great fan experience, and
boy did that turn out to be true. My main
concern was will I be able to actually see the
game and enjoy the baseball game because we were so
far away, and that was a pleasant surprise. By the
(01:45):
time we got to our seats and like I looked
out and saw it, I was like, oh, this isn't
bad at all, Like this is actually pretty cool, this
is going to work, just fun.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
But everything else was a complete disaster. Really.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
So we got to Bristol at noon. We stayed in
an airbnb half an hour away. We get the Bristol
at noon, we start hanging out, you know whatever. So
we go into the fan fest around two thirty three
o'clock and it's raining. It's not awful, but it's raining,
and our group had gotten split up because some waited
(02:20):
to stay dry and others just went on ahead. So
we get to the fan fest and I go up
to this gate and this lady says, you got to
have your ticket to the game to get in, And
the people that were ahead of us had the tickets
on their phone, and so I was like.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Oh, my bad.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
So I just trying to get their attention, like, walked
over to the other side and there's I'm not kidding,
twenty feet another like entrance and the guy says, you
can just come in. Oh, and I was like, okay,
So I just walked in. There's from twenty feet next
(02:56):
to each other. One lady wouldn't let me in without
a ticket. Another guy just let me walk into the FanFest.
So that was my first like okay, it's strange.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Here we go.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
From that point forward, Tony, in a midst of ninety
thousand people, I did not see. I cannot think of
seeing more than one, maybe two security personnel. So I
have that in the back of my mind. Because big
crowds the world we live in, right, wrong or indifferent.
I always kind of think about that, and I think
(03:29):
I'm not alone, and like, what do I do if
things go south?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Here?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I didn't see a single security guard like almost the
whole time. The first thing you see when you get
into the FanFest is a ginormous line for merchandise that's
weaving in and out of all the other different parts
of the fan fest. Now, the FanFest itself wasn't that bad,
Like they had the Legacy Walk, and they had some
(03:54):
nascars there, and there was drinks, and there was in
the music. We went up and watched Jake Owen. He
was pretty good, and I was like, yeah, this is
too bad. A big ferris wheel, but the lines for
everything were long.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
But that to me to interject like that is where
I started seeing stuff that was posted, thinking like man,
this looks cool. Yeah, And it was the walk looks cool,
the ferris wheel, the logos outside the stadium, the walkthroughs
that I had seen. I was like, man, that looks
pretty cool. Yeah, and it was. And to their credit,
(04:26):
I think they did a pretty good job with that. Now,
I wasn't all that interested in merchandise, but one of
my friends was. And we didn't see them for forty
five minutes. They missed most of Jake Owen because they
were in line to get merchandise.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And so finally Jake o and ends and we're like, okay,
we're going to go into the speedway now, and it's
just a mass of people all descending on this one
gate and there's no organization at all, Like it's just
everybody all in one spot up this big ramp and whatever.
So finally, okay, what I've been in stuff like in
(05:01):
Cleveland when you go to a Browns game, one interest
is kind of like that. Yep, not all that abnormal.
But we get in there, we get into our interest.
And we went in the Richard Petty gate shout out
to the king.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Wow. And you walk in and to your.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Right is nothing but a sky high mound of dirt
that is like, I guess nowhere to put it. I
guess what it's built on. Like I'm serious, Like you
couldn't just turn right once you got in there. You
had to go left, which is true with Nascar, you
always turn left. But that was like the center field
gate basically. And we get in there and the water
(05:39):
is just dripping down from all the stands above us.
It's like it's raining indoors and the lines there are
outrageously long as well, for concessions, for merchandise, for everything.
I'm like, this is just like it seems kind of
like madness. So figure out how to get our seats.
(06:00):
And we're up at the top blah blah blah blah blah.
And so we get up to like our level that
we're on and we're like, okay, we're gonna get some
food before we get to our seats, and we'll check
out Tim McGraw and Pitbull oh Man.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
And so I get into we get.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Into line around five fifteen, five point thirty something along
those lines, and didn't really get to our seats until
six forty five, six thirty six forty five was in
line for that long an hour, hour and a half.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
It was forever.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It was just barely moving right again, no security, nobody
communicating nothing, Like there weren't vendors walking around selling stuff nothing.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
So I know they didn't. The seating wasn't all the
way around the track, right, So were the concessions all
the way around the track closed or everything was closed off?
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Like half the track was closed off. Okay, so think
about it.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
You have ninety thousand people, so seventy five percent of
the capacity Bristol Motor Speedway in fifty to sixty percent
of the area, so that all those people are jammed in,
and so we're like seven people away from getting to
the front of the line after this hour plus long
time it takes to get there. When they come out
(07:16):
and say they've run out of hot dogs, Oh my gosh.
So I'm getting angry now because, like I just wanted
to get a couple of hot dogs and watch baseball.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Right, I've reached that point in the.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Afternoon, and I'm looking at like they have the special
like menu up there, and it's like MLB Speedway Classic
presented by blah blah blah, and it's hot dogs, nachos
and cheese, nacho dogs, popcorn, candy, ice cream, lemonade, typical stuff.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
And I don't need something fancy.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
I'm cool, sure, And so most of the like the
popcorn was gone when I got up there. All they
had were nachos and cheese. And you could tell that
the nachos with cheese, like the cheese had just come
out of the bag. It wasn't it wasn't even warm,
if you could tell. And so I said, can I
have some kettle corn and a coke and a bag
(08:09):
of M and m's. So that's what I waited an
hour and a half for. And so I'm like, okay, whatever.
It's at that point when I fire off my first
tweet that this has been a miserable experience, and immediately
people are killing me for saying it's a bad experience.
And I thought to myself, Okay, yeah, I probably tweeted
a little early, and you know, I'm here and I
(08:30):
get to experience this blah blah, and I'm thinking, the
rest of the evening's going to go fine. Maybe I
shouldn't be complaining. And it did not, because in the
time that I tweeted to the time I got to
my seats, we got to our seats. We're the first
row under the awning at the top of the stadium,
so I'm thinking, all right, we're gonna be dry, like
(08:51):
We're fine. View wasn't bad, except there was a faulty
gutter directly above our seats. It had like rusted out
and was just dumping water onto our seats. We had
six seats, three of them you couldn't sit in. And
while we were in line, my other buddy was trying
(09:12):
to get someone to help him with this, sure, and
the person said, I don't know. I've never been here before.
This was one of the volunteers. This is my first
time here, they said, and their best advice to him
was just see if someone else moves and then sit
in their seats. And now I was running hot because
(09:34):
of the line, so I wasn't gonna like say anything,
but like in my mind, I'm thinking, you're gonna be
more accommodating to me than this if we spent this
much money. But in the moment, I was just trying
to settle down, see what's happening. Meanwhile, this is the
very end of Tim McGraw and Pitbull, which are like
five hundred yards away in the opposite direction.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
You can barely see them.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
I really hear them that well, and I'm like, just
like at this point, I'm like, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Right?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
So we're like kind of scattered about trying to just
sit there and see what's gonna happen. And the rain's
not that bad. I'm thinking, Okay, they can play through this,
like this is no big deal. Blah blah blah blah blah.
And then, to Major League Baseball's credit, the pregame was awesome. Yeah,
the players going around the track and the trucks and
the national anthem and the flyover and the player introductions.
(10:31):
They did all that awesome and by that point the
stadium was pretty full.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yea, and it was rocket.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
You feel like, here we go and we're a part
of the card stunt, so we're like part of the
American flag and like the Brave Reds and Braves logo
that we did.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
It was cool.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
And the national anthem you can feel the thing like
swaying because it's one of those giant structures like that,
and I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. It's a
little scary, but that's kind of cool. And then as
Johnny Bench is catching the first oh here's this. I
haven't even tell anybody this, they now out's Kyle Busch
coming out in the Reds game, in the Reds jersey
(11:04):
on the I can't believe I forgot.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I forgot to tell so many people this.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
On the opposite end of Bristol Motor Speedway, they have
like iconic moments at Bristol. Yeah, and one of them
was Kyle Busch winning an entire weekend. He won a
truck race a Bush race and like the Cup race,
and it says Bush sweeps the weekend Busch. That's how
his name is spelled. On the video board. They introduced
(11:31):
Kyle Busch with an e oh no, his jersey literally
spelled correctly as they're showing him.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
That's an easy one.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
They spelled his name wrong, and uh then it starts downpouring,
and I'm like, okay, I get it, We're going to
be in a delay whatever, and it just kept getting
worse from there.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Unreal.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
But they were out of food by the national anthem.
I got back to my seat six thirty six forty five,
and by the time the game was supposed to start,
they were out of food pretty much everywhere, hot dogs like,
it was all gone. And I'm thinking, okay, well we
did the math earlier. These are not people, clearly that
(12:14):
have ever been here or understand this crowd or how
it works at all. These are clearly not NASCAR people.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
What's your point. They had a year to do this.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
These are Major League Baseball's people that don't seem to
know what they're doing. And I think you know, during
a race, you come and go to the concessions more
frequently as opposed to everybody's trying to get something now
and then go watch the game, or people are don't
want to get wet, so they come to the concessions.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So the rain obviously made things worse, no doubt about that.
But even without the rain, they were completely ill equipped
to handle that many people.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, in that space.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
I had a buddy of mine who messaged me that
he went and said he was there Saturday. Hamburger, no bun,
hot dog, no ketchup, nachos, no cheese, And he said,
the crazy thing is they decided that they were going
to sell the hot dogs and the burgers out of
a shaved ice trailer. Oh my gosh, I didn't see that.
He said hour and ten minute waittime.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
And see with me, like, we weren't even as negatively
affected as so many other people were because we kind
of were at a spot where we could kind of
sit under that awning, whereas other people were just cramped.
And then again, when you're down at the lower level,
it's raining indoors basically because this structure just doesn't Yeah,
it's just leaking rain.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yeah, I mean NASCAR race, the first sign of water
drops and they cancel yeah, they delay.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
And it takes forever to dry the track, and like, yeah,
that's the thing.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Like, so I'm waiting and they obviously start the game,
so I'm thinking, like, okay, they must be able to
see that the weather's going to be fine now, right,
And then it's raining cats and dogs and they're playing
in puddles.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Here's the other thing.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
So like all day the forecast seem like it's going
to be fine, like it'll rain, but it won't be
enough to delay the game. And the other thing is
there's so many people there, so you have no cell
phone service, so you can't see what the radar is
going to look like the service comes and goes. I
will say this, for the most part, the Wi Fi
worked well, so kudos to Major League Baseball. But the
(14:11):
radar would like continually change, like it would say one
thing and then it would say something else. And I
think this just storm kind of got in this valley
and it just kind of just over and over again,
would just produce rain, and it just sat over Bristol
Motor Speedway.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
So brutal made everything worse.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
And I posted some of the pictures on my Instagram
and on my Twitter and at one point, like they're
standing water like probably up to my ankles yea, and
it's just dirty, muddy water running down from all that
mud that was in there.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
If the problem is is that people spent time money
to either drive or fly to the event, to buy
tickets to the event that was put on by the MLB. Yeah,
so that product reflects upon Major League Baseball and to
be that ill prepared is an absolutely disastrous look. And
(15:06):
then you feel bad because then they're playing Sunday and
there's really no one there, and it just it was
a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I do think they got more people to show up
Sunday than they originally expected because most people probably treated
it like us, which was we're staying Thursday night or
Saturday night as well, and they just said, okay, we'll
get back home late whenever that is we decided to
come home. We did not go on Sunday. But I
also think because by the time we decided to walk out,
(15:31):
so the red score that run, it's like ten fifteen
or whatever it is, they can it by ten forty five.
We're walking out at ten forty five, and it's not
raining that badly from really ten forty five up until
like midnight, it didn't rain, got the game and it
felt like and that part like from the nine forty
to midnight air, I think Major League Baseball is actually
(15:52):
correct on the radar, but I think they looked around
and said, oh crap, we're out of food, people are mad,
everyone's leaving. We can't handle this for another eight innings
and there'll be nobody in the stands.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
Yeah, so they started to worry about the player safety. Yeah,
so they said, okay, let's do this tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
I think they could have gotten that game in that
night and played late, but I think all the other
issues that they had in logistics screwed it up. And
I really point the finger wholly on Major League Baseball
because I think if they would have been a little
bit more in conjunction with NASCAR and with Bristol Motor Speedway,
maybe there would have been a way around that. But
(16:31):
it was it was like, again, my experience was not
nearly as bad as others, but it was a pretty
miserable experience from my perspective.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
And that's not even talking about the result of the game,
which we have to get to.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Well, when you talk about you know what actually happened
on the field that night. Things were pretty good for
me as far as that's a good start. And again
they did some good stuff. It wasn't all bad, but
it was pretty bad.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Let's uh, let's do a quick touch and go. When
we get back, we'll get back on the clock a
little bit. Actually, you know, ton, what if we just
combine the breaks.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
I love that. If we just combine the breaks, then
we'll do some phone calls.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Let's take the phone calls when we get back, and
then we'll recap as we get into our two. Yeah,
because there's a lot to get to and I want
to get some phone calls as well. Five one, three, seven,
four nine, fifteen thirty. This is Cincy three sixty. Thanks
for listening on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports Station and
thanks to Skyline Chile.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
The Superior Game
Here's the one pitch swinging, there's a shot past the
third makesman Riley that's in the left field. Here comes
but playing around third, he'll score and the Reds level one,
nothing lead. Austin Hayes putting the Reds on top.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Yeah, highlight of the weekend. Let's go, highlight of the weekend. Yeah,
it was a highlight, the highlight. It was a highlight.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Welcome back.
Speaker 4 (00:25):
It is since he three to sixty on ESPN fifteen
thirty Cincinnati Sports Station. Thanks to Skyline Chile phone lines
will be open in just a few minutes five one, three, seven, four, nine,
fifteen thirty. Look, we can get into the uh, the
x's and o's of the game itself, what the Reds
did or didn't do, or what the loss means or
ramifications you know, on what it did not really be
(00:46):
able to utilize Chase Burns in a start that he
was able to make or capitalize on any momentum that
you gained on Friday. But before all of that, I
wanted to to get into this, Austin with you, because
you were there and I I would describe some of
it as you witness some of these nightmare scenarios unfolding
that many people talked about that were able to go
(01:08):
to the Bristol Moltor Speedway for the Reds and the Braves.
Where do you even want to start with this? I
want to start?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
I mean, I guess I'll just tell the whole story, yes,
and try to provide a little bit of context.
Speaker 3 (01:20):
So I've said this before.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
At first I wasn't crazy about going because I just
didn't think it would be a great fan experience, and
boy did that turn out to be true. My main
concern was will I be able to actually see the
game and enjoy the baseball game because we were so
far away, and that was a pleasant surprise. By the
(01:45):
time we got to our seats and like I looked
out and saw it, I was like, oh, this isn't
bad at all, Like this is actually pretty cool, this
is going to work, just fun.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
But everything else was a complete disaster. Really.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
So we got to Bristol at noon. We stayed in
an airbnb half an hour away. We get the Bristol
at noon, we start hanging out, you know whatever. So
we go into the fan fest around two thirty three
o'clock and it's raining. It's not awful, but it's raining,
and our group had gotten split up because some waited
(02:20):
to stay dry and others just went on ahead. So
we get to the fan fest and I go up
to this gate and this lady says, you got to
have your ticket to the game to get in, And
the people that were ahead of us had the tickets
on their phone, and so I was like.
Speaker 3 (02:35):
Oh, my bad.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
So I just trying to get their attention, like, walked
over to the other side and there's I'm not kidding,
twenty feet another like entrance and the guy says, you
can just come in. Oh, and I was like, okay,
So I just walked in. There's from twenty feet next
(02:56):
to each other. One lady wouldn't let me in without
a ticket. Another guy just let me walk into the FanFest.
So that was my first like okay, it's strange.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
Here we go.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
From that point forward, Tony, in a midst of ninety
thousand people, I did not see. I cannot think of
seeing more than one, maybe two security personnel. So I
have that in the back of my mind. Because big
crowds the world we live in, right, wrong or indifferent.
I always kind of think about that, and I think
(03:29):
I'm not alone, and like, what do I do if
things go south?
Speaker 1 (03:32):
Here?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I didn't see a single security guard like almost the
whole time. The first thing you see when you get
into the FanFest is a ginormous line for merchandise that's
weaving in and out of all the other different parts
of the fan fest. Now, the FanFest itself wasn't that bad,
Like they had the Legacy Walk, and they had some
(03:54):
nascars there, and there was drinks, and there was in
the music. We went up and watched Jake Owen. He
was pretty good, and I was like, yeah, this is
too bad. A big ferris wheel, but the lines for
everything were long.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
But that to me to interject like that is where
I started seeing stuff that was posted, thinking like man,
this looks cool. Yeah, And it was the walk looks cool,
the ferris wheel, the logos outside the stadium, the walkthroughs
that I had seen. I was like, man, that looks
pretty cool. Yeah, and it was. And to their credit,
(04:26):
I think they did a pretty good job with that. Now,
I wasn't all that interested in merchandise, but one of
my friends was. And we didn't see them for forty
five minutes. They missed most of Jake Owen because they
were in line to get merchandise.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:40):
And so finally Jake o and ends and we're like, okay,
we're going to go into the speedway now, and it's
just a mass of people all descending on this one
gate and there's no organization at all, Like it's just
everybody all in one spot up this big ramp and whatever.
So finally, okay, what I've been in stuff like in
(05:01):
Cleveland when you go to a Browns game, one interest
is kind of like that. Yep, not all that abnormal.
But we get in there, we get into our interest.
And we went in the Richard Petty gate shout out
to the king.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
Wow. And you walk in and to your.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
Right is nothing but a sky high mound of dirt
that is like, I guess nowhere to put it. I
guess what it's built on. Like I'm serious, Like you
couldn't just turn right once you got in there. You
had to go left, which is true with Nascar, you
always turn left. But that was like the center field
gate basically. And we get in there and the water
(05:39):
is just dripping down from all the stands above us.
It's like it's raining indoors and the lines there are
outrageously long as well, for concessions, for merchandise, for everything.
I'm like, this is just like it seems kind of
like madness. So figure out how to get our seats.
(06:00):
And we're up at the top blah blah blah blah blah.
And so we get up to like our level that
we're on and we're like, okay, we're gonna get some
food before we get to our seats, and we'll check
out Tim McGraw and Pitbull oh Man.
Speaker 3 (06:11):
And so I get into we get.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
Into line around five fifteen, five point thirty something along
those lines, and didn't really get to our seats until
six forty five, six thirty six forty five was in
line for that long an hour, hour and a half.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
It was forever.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
It was just barely moving right again, no security, nobody
communicating nothing, Like there weren't vendors walking around selling stuff nothing.
Speaker 4 (06:43):
So I know they didn't. The seating wasn't all the
way around the track, right, So were the concessions all
the way around the track closed or everything was closed off?
Speaker 3 (06:51):
Like half the track was closed off. Okay, so think
about it.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
You have ninety thousand people, so seventy five percent of
the capacity Bristol Motor Speedway in fifty to sixty percent
of the area, so that all those people are jammed in,
and so we're like seven people away from getting to
the front of the line after this hour plus long
time it takes to get there. When they come out
(07:16):
and say they've run out of hot dogs, Oh my gosh.
So I'm getting angry now because, like I just wanted
to get a couple of hot dogs and watch baseball.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
Right, I've reached that point in the.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
Afternoon, and I'm looking at like they have the special
like menu up there, and it's like MLB Speedway Classic
presented by blah blah blah, and it's hot dogs, nachos
and cheese, nacho dogs, popcorn, candy, ice cream, lemonade, typical stuff.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
And I don't need something fancy.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
I'm cool, sure, And so most of the like the
popcorn was gone when I got up there. All they
had were nachos and cheese. And you could tell that
the nachos with cheese, like the cheese had just come
out of the bag. It wasn't it wasn't even warm,
if you could tell. And so I said, can I
have some kettle corn and a coke and a bag
(08:09):
of M and m's. So that's what I waited an
hour and a half for. And so I'm like, okay, whatever.
It's at that point when I fire off my first
tweet that this has been a miserable experience, and immediately
people are killing me for saying it's a bad experience.
And I thought to myself, Okay, yeah, I probably tweeted
a little early, and you know, I'm here and I
(08:30):
get to experience this blah blah, and I'm thinking, the
rest of the evening's going to go fine. Maybe I
shouldn't be complaining. And it did not, because in the
time that I tweeted to the time I got to
my seats, we got to our seats. We're the first
row under the awning at the top of the stadium,
so I'm thinking, all right, we're gonna be dry, like
(08:51):
We're fine. View wasn't bad, except there was a faulty
gutter directly above our seats. It had like rusted out
and was just dumping water onto our seats. We had
six seats, three of them you couldn't sit in. And
while we were in line, my other buddy was trying
(09:12):
to get someone to help him with this, sure, and
the person said, I don't know. I've never been here before.
This was one of the volunteers. This is my first
time here, they said, and their best advice to him
was just see if someone else moves and then sit
in their seats. And now I was running hot because
(09:34):
of the line, so I wasn't gonna like say anything,
but like in my mind, I'm thinking, you're gonna be
more accommodating to me than this if we spent this
much money. But in the moment, I was just trying
to settle down, see what's happening. Meanwhile, this is the
very end of Tim McGraw and Pitbull, which are like
five hundred yards away in the opposite direction.
Speaker 3 (09:58):
You can barely see them.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
I really hear them that well, and I'm like, just
like at this point, I'm like, what's going on?
Speaker 3 (10:07):
Right?
Speaker 2 (10:08):
So we're like kind of scattered about trying to just
sit there and see what's gonna happen. And the rain's
not that bad. I'm thinking, Okay, they can play through this,
like this is no big deal. Blah blah blah blah blah.
And then, to Major League Baseball's credit, the pregame was awesome. Yeah,
the players going around the track and the trucks and
the national anthem and the flyover and the player introductions.
(10:31):
They did all that awesome and by that point the
stadium was pretty full.
Speaker 3 (10:35):
Yea, and it was rocket.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
You feel like, here we go and we're a part
of the card stunt, so we're like part of the
American flag and like the Brave Reds and Braves logo
that we did.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
It was cool.
Speaker 2 (10:44):
And the national anthem you can feel the thing like
swaying because it's one of those giant structures like that,
and I'm like, oh, that's kind of cool. It's a
little scary, but that's kind of cool. And then as
Johnny Bench is catching the first oh here's this. I
haven't even tell anybody this, they now out's Kyle Busch
coming out in the Reds game, in the Reds jersey
(11:04):
on the I can't believe I forgot.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
I forgot to tell so many people this.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
On the opposite end of Bristol Motor Speedway, they have
like iconic moments at Bristol. Yeah, and one of them
was Kyle Busch winning an entire weekend. He won a
truck race a Bush race and like the Cup race,
and it says Bush sweeps the weekend Busch. That's how
his name is spelled. On the video board. They introduced
(11:31):
Kyle Busch with an e oh no, his jersey literally
spelled correctly as they're showing him.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
That's an easy one.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
They spelled his name wrong, and uh then it starts downpouring,
and I'm like, okay, I get it, We're going to
be in a delay whatever, and it just kept getting
worse from there.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Unreal.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
But they were out of food by the national anthem.
I got back to my seat six thirty six forty five,
and by the time the game was supposed to start,
they were out of food pretty much everywhere, hot dogs like,
it was all gone. And I'm thinking, okay, well we
did the math earlier. These are not people, clearly that
(12:14):
have ever been here or understand this crowd or how
it works at all. These are clearly not NASCAR people.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
What's your point. They had a year to do this.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
These are Major League Baseball's people that don't seem to
know what they're doing. And I think you know, during
a race, you come and go to the concessions more
frequently as opposed to everybody's trying to get something now
and then go watch the game, or people are don't
want to get wet, so they come to the concessions.
Speaker 3 (12:37):
You know.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
So the rain obviously made things worse, no doubt about that.
But even without the rain, they were completely ill equipped
to handle that many people.
Speaker 3 (12:49):
Yeah, in that space.
Speaker 4 (12:50):
I had a buddy of mine who messaged me that
he went and said he was there Saturday. Hamburger, no bun,
hot dog, no ketchup, nachos, no cheese, And he said,
the crazy thing is they decided that they were going
to sell the hot dogs and the burgers out of
a shaved ice trailer. Oh my gosh, I didn't see that.
He said hour and ten minute waittime.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
And see with me, like, we weren't even as negatively
affected as so many other people were because we kind
of were at a spot where we could kind of
sit under that awning, whereas other people were just cramped.
And then again, when you're down at the lower level,
it's raining indoors basically because this structure just doesn't Yeah,
it's just leaking rain.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
Yeah, I mean NASCAR race, the first sign of water
drops and they cancel yeah, they delay.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
And it takes forever to dry the track, and like, yeah,
that's the thing.
Speaker 4 (13:36):
Like, so I'm waiting and they obviously start the game,
so I'm thinking, like, okay, they must be able to
see that the weather's going to be fine now, right,
And then it's raining cats and dogs and they're playing
in puddles.
Speaker 3 (13:47):
Here's the other thing.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
So like all day the forecast seem like it's going
to be fine, like it'll rain, but it won't be
enough to delay the game. And the other thing is
there's so many people there, so you have no cell
phone service, so you can't see what the radar is
going to look like the service comes and goes. I
will say this, for the most part, the Wi Fi
worked well, so kudos to Major League Baseball. But the
(14:11):
radar would like continually change, like it would say one
thing and then it would say something else. And I
think this just storm kind of got in this valley
and it just kind of just over and over again,
would just produce rain, and it just sat over Bristol
Motor Speedway.
Speaker 3 (14:28):
So brutal made everything worse.
Speaker 2 (14:30):
And I posted some of the pictures on my Instagram
and on my Twitter and at one point, like they're
standing water like probably up to my ankles yea, and
it's just dirty, muddy water running down from all that
mud that was in there.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
If the problem is is that people spent time money
to either drive or fly to the event, to buy
tickets to the event that was put on by the MLB. Yeah,
so that product reflects upon Major League Baseball and to
be that ill prepared is an absolutely disastrous look. And
(15:06):
then you feel bad because then they're playing Sunday and
there's really no one there, and it just it was
a nightmare.
Speaker 2 (15:11):
I do think they got more people to show up
Sunday than they originally expected because most people probably treated
it like us, which was we're staying Thursday night or
Saturday night as well, and they just said, okay, we'll
get back home late whenever that is we decided to
come home. We did not go on Sunday. But I
also think because by the time we decided to walk out,
(15:31):
so the red score that run, it's like ten fifteen
or whatever it is, they can it by ten forty five.
We're walking out at ten forty five, and it's not
raining that badly from really ten forty five up until
like midnight, it didn't rain, got the game and it
felt like and that part like from the nine forty
to midnight air, I think Major League Baseball is actually
(15:52):
correct on the radar, but I think they looked around
and said, oh crap, we're out of food, people are mad,
everyone's leaving. We can't handle this for another eight innings
and there'll be nobody in the stands.
Speaker 4 (16:04):
Yeah, so they started to worry about the player safety. Yeah,
so they said, okay, let's do this tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (16:09):
I think they could have gotten that game in that
night and played late, but I think all the other
issues that they had in logistics screwed it up. And
I really point the finger wholly on Major League Baseball
because I think if they would have been a little
bit more in conjunction with NASCAR and with Bristol Motor Speedway,
maybe there would have been a way around that. But
(16:31):
it was it was like, again, my experience was not
nearly as bad as others, but it was a pretty
miserable experience from my perspective.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
And that's not even talking about the result of the game,
which we have to get to.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
Well, when you talk about you know what actually happened
on the field that night. Things were pretty good for
me as far as that's a good start. And again
they did some good stuff. It wasn't all bad, but
it was pretty bad.
Speaker 4 (16:55):
Let's uh, let's do a quick touch and go. When
we get back, we'll get back on the clock a
little bit. Actually, you know, ton, what if we just
combine the breaks.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
I love that. If we just combine the breaks, then
we'll do some phone calls.
Speaker 4 (17:04):
Let's take the phone calls when we get back, and
then we'll recap as we get into our two. Yeah,
because there's a lot to get to and I want
to get some phone calls as well. Five one, three, seven,
four nine, fifteen thirty. This is Cincy three sixty. Thanks
for listening on ESPN fifteen thirty Cincinnati Sports Station and
thanks to Skyline Chile.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
The Superior Game
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