The Cincinnati Reds and Atlanta Braves will meet at Bristol Motor Speedway next month in the first-ever regular season Major League Baseball game played in the state of Tennessee. Billed as the 2025 MLB Speedway Classic, the event will see the two clubs facing off on a field constructed within the infield of one of NASCAR’s most iconic tracks.
To match this fuel-injected setting, the league unveiled a pair of special uniforms for the game this morning, styled after the typical visual identity of a stock car.
The design changes are most obvious on the helmets. Each team will wear a fully custom shell featuring a large player number in a racing-style font on one side, a stylized version of the team name in an autograph-style script, a checkerboard pattern, and two crossed checkered flags on the back. The front logo remains the usual team mark, now paired with the club name beneath it in the same autograph font.
“You’re not afraid to fill a space in NASCAR, and these things help fill a space,” said Jason Yeadon, MLB’s Senior Creative Director, in a conversation with SportsLogos.net. “This is the first time we’ve designed a full custom [batting] helmet. The overall look of the uniform is going to be a big part of telling the story.”
With Atlanta in their navy blue alternates and Cincinnati in its standard home whites, the jerseys will appear unchanged for the game, at least from the front. Turn the jersey around and you’ll see a new racecar-inspired player number font, identical in style for both teams, with Atlanta’s in red and Cincinnati’s in white. A 2025 MLB Speedway Classic logo will be worn on one sleeve.
“We designed one set of numbers for both clubs and then used them in two different colourways,” Yeadon said. “It’s a custom typeface we created for this event to continue the overall racing theme.”
The on-field caps will also feature NASCAR styling, although I unfortunately don’t have any photos of them at this time (I will soon; check back!) If I recall correctly, the caps included a flame design along the side panel. According to Yeadon, New Era led the design process for the caps.
“We have a good relationship with New Era,” he said. “We typically talk to them about some of the design and show the style guide. For this, we were moving quickly on other stuff, so we let them run with it.”
The overall Speedway Classic branding includes a full visual identity package created by the league. At the centre is the primary logo, revealed last year, that uses the league’s simplified block font paired with angled ovals, checkerboard flags, and other speed-related elements. The name of the host city, Bristol, Tennessee, is worked directly into the mark.
“Overall, the logo is pretty simple, but the style guide around it and the patterns are really what we wanted to promote,” said Yeadon. “One of the big pieces is starting to bring in that speed of the track, showing the angle, showing the circle or the oval they’d be racing on, and the stars and the lights and how that’s going to be a spectacle.”
Supporting design elements include NASCAR-style driver signatures, flame streaks, oversized decals, and a variety of classic racing car-style patterns. These secondary logos and graphics were created for use across merchandise, social media, and event signage.
Yeadon also noted the artwork was developed with consumer products in mind, and then expanded across the rest of the branding. The colours used throughout (the various shades of blue and red) are part of MLB’s recently standardized palette of event-specific and officially approved colours.
“If we’re picking a red or a blue, or even a green or an orange, we have an MLB version of what those colours are,” he said.
The event’s visual direction reflects NASCAR’s long-standing design approach, characterized by full-body graphics, oversized lettering, and layered visual elements. Both the logos and uniforms of the MLB Speedway Classic incorporate many of these same ideas to create an on-field product that blends the traditional baseball look with the more fast-paced NASCAR style.
The 2025 MLB Speedway Classic will take place at Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee, on Saturday, August 2. Bristol, which opened in 1961, is best known for its half-mile oval with steep banking and stadium-style seating. Often referred to as “The Last Great Colosseum,” the venue has hosted NASCAR Cup Series races and a few football games over the years, including an NFL exhibition game shortly after its opening.
