The Associated Press The Cincinnati Reds and Atlanta Braves will play on a baseball field inside the racetrack at Bristol Motor Speedway on Saturday in Bristol, Tenn.

BRISTOL, Tenn. — Bristol Motor Speedway is ready to make history by hosting the first Major League Baseball game in Tennessee.

The stage, or in this case the racetrack, has been set for the biggest crowd for a regular season baseball game at Saturday night’s MLB Speedway Classic between the Atlanta Braves and Cincinnati Reds.

“The way the venue looks really is something that you can put on paper, but you really can’t get a true vision of it until you actually put grandstands on the infield of the track, and you put 3,500 seats in the middle of 87,000 seats,” Jeremiah Yolkut, MLB’s senior vice president of global events, said Friday.

“Those things just don’t become a reality until you actually see them.”

What fans will see Saturday is a baseball diamond tucked inside the infield of the half-mile bullring at Bristol. A temporary grandstand wraps around both sidelines with a press box at the top. The track’s Colossus videoboard hovers over foul territory along the third base line. Any balls hit off Colossus will be foul.

Three-time All-Star Sean Casey played in a March 2008 exhibition between the Red Sox and Dodgers with 115,300 at the Los Angeles Coliseum for the largest crowd ever to see a baseball game. Casey said Friday that the energy from the fans that day was “incredible.”

“I think the Reds and the Braves taking this field with 90,000-plus people at Bristol Motor Speedway, the energy for this game is going to be off the charts,” Casey said after spending time on this field broadcasting with MLB Network.

MLB didn’t try to top that 2008 mark for attendance, blocking off seats in Turns 3 and 4 at the track with a racing capacity of 146,000. Officials announced Monday that more than 85,000 tickets had been sold to top the previous paid attendance of 84,587 set Sept. 12, 1954, when Cleveland Stadium hosted the New York Yankees.

Yolkut said a difference between now and the 2008 game is this is a regular-season game and not an exhibition. This game wasn’t about simply packing people in to set a record and telling some fans to just watch the game on the videoboard.

“We thought it was important to have as minimal obstruction seats as possible and to make sure that the fans coming were going to have a great experience,” Yolkut said.

Wrigley gets 2027 game

CHICAGO — The Friendly Confines are set to host The Midsummer Classic.

Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred made it official, announcing during a news conference Friday at home plate that the 2027 All-Star Game will be held at Wrigley Field.

Baseball’s second-oldest ballpark hasn’t hosted an All-Star Game since 1990. Chicago Cubs great Ryne Sandberg — who died Monday of cancer — won the Home Run Derby that year. Wrigley also hosted All-Star Games in 1947 and 1962.

Manfred, who was joined by Cubs chairman Tom Ricketts, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, cited the “amazing transformation” of the ballpark and surrounding streets in the past decade as part of a massive renovation by the Ricketts family.

The Cubs first approached the league about hosting an All-Star Game eight years ago. But for a variety of reasons, including competition from other cities and safety concerns with the ballpark in a bustling neighborhood, they weren’t awarded one until now. Chicago cleared a big hurdle in June, when the city passed an ordinance allowing sidewalks along Addison Street to be widened and removable bollards to be installed around the ballpark.

“I think we’re probably overdue in terms of being at Wrigley,” Manfred said. “The Ricketts family, city of Chicago and state of Illinois made a tremendous investment not just in the ballpark but the area around it. I think it’ll be a fantastic venue for our All-Star celebration.”

Wrigley Field is set to join Cleveland’s Municipal Stadium and the old Yankee Stadium as the only ballparks to host four All-Star Games. The city of Chicago will host the event for the eighth time, second only to New York with nine.

Elsewhere:

– The Tampa Bay Rays placed All-Star first baseman Jonathan Aranda on the 10-day injured list Friday with a fractured left wrist. Aranda was injured Thursday in a collision with New York Yankees designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton. Aranda said the injury did not feel “catastrophic” and he’s hopeful he’ll return this season, although the Rays cautioned he won’t be able to use the wrist for approximately three weeks.

– Brian Knight has retired as a major league umpire because of injuries and was replaced on the major league staff Friday by Charlie Ramos. Knight, 50, made his major league debut on May 7, 2011, as the third base umpire for Texas’ home game against the Chicago White Sox and was promoted to the major league staff in 2011. He worked the 2023 World Series and the 2006 and ’23 World Baseball Classics.