Tri-City Chili Peppers get some extra glow with ‘Cosmic Baseball’ under black lights

The Tri-City Chili Peppers are set to debut “cosmic baseball” later this spring. (Courtesy Tri-City Chili Peppers)

In a bid to continue growing their fan base, the Tri-City Chili Peppers – the region’s other minor league baseball team – are turning off the lights. 

This summer the franchise, which plays its home games at Shepherd Stadium in Colonial Heights, is debuting what it calls “cosmic baseball,” where the ballpark will be lit under black lights, and the players’ bats, balls and uniforms will glow in the dark. 

It’s the latest move the team is making to draw crowds for its fourth season in the Colonial Plain League, an amateur baseball league that’s free from MLB affiliations and popular among collegiate players looking to play ball over the summer. In this league the Savannah Bananas vaulted from humble minor league club to national sensation that now sells out major league ballparks. 

Last year the Bananas left the CPL and now tour the country playing by their own rules designed to entertain fans rather than foster intense competition, almost like a baseball version of the Harlem Globetrotters. Chili Peppers owner Chris Martin said that even though they’re no longer league-mates with the Bananas, the Georgia outfit left an impression on the Chili Peppers. 

Chris Martin

“They’ve really mentored us on the way that we engage our players and our fans around the stadium,” Martin said. “We’ve taken their (notion) of, ‘How can you entertain and still play baseball?’ and we’ve implemented it into what we do every day.”

In its first season, Martin said they’d scripted some sort of fan entertainment for every half inning. Now they have something planned every 30 seconds, things like having MC’s run around the stands and interact with the fans, all while the PA announcer hypes them up. 

“There are no dead moments. The environment has gotten so electric,” Martin said. 

The origin of cosmic baseball goes back to a night game two years ago when the Chili Peppers handed out around 1,000 glow sticks to fans.

Martin said the fans bought into the fluorescent atmosphere it helped bring, but he felt the ballclub could do more. He looked into whether they could have black lights projecting onto the field along with the standard white stadium lights, but soon learned that the black lights would get totally drowned out. 

“Then it turned into, ‘Well, what if we just put black lights on the field, and our baseballs and jerseys and bats were black light-reactive?’” he said. 

He brought the idea to Sonaray, a lighting company based just outside of Staunton, before the start of the 2023 season. Sonaray told him the company didn’t think there was a black light in the world strong enough to do what Martin had in mind but they’d look into it. 

The 2023 season came and went, and Martin said he’d all but forgotten about the black light idea until one day in September when Sonaray called him back. 

“They said, ‘Hey we got it, it’s done. You want to see it?’” Martin recalled. “I was like, ‘Yeah, man, I’m in!’”

They sampled the lighting setup at Shepherd Stadium and Martin decided to go for it. He said the franchise spent over $100,000 installing 18 black lights on the stadium’s light poles that project onto the field and the into stands. Colonial Heights-based electrician JW Electric did the installation. 

The games will be played under normal lights until it’s dark enough to activate the black lights.

The next step was handing the players their new jerseys, bats and balls that glow in the dark and trying it all out at practice. 

Midway through that trial run, Martin approached Chili Peppers catcher Jacob Lee, who also plays for VCU. Lee didn’t seem to be having any trouble catching curveballs under the black lights. 

“I asked him, ‘How are you doing back there?’ and Jacob goes, ‘Chris, this is what I do. I catch curveballs,’” Martin said and laughed. “For him to turn to me and tell me that took a lot of pressure off.”

The Chili Peppers’ first game under the black lights will be June 1, and they have more cosmic games planned for June 15, June 28 and July 20. The season opener is May 23. 

Martin said the entire game won’t be under black lights; they’ll switch over only once the sun goes down.

As far as Martin is aware, the Chili Peppers are the first team in the country to have a stadium capable of full-on black lights. 

The Chili Peppers play at Colonial Heights’ Shepherd Stadium. (Mike Platania photo)

Martin and a business partner founded the Chili Peppers in 2019 with a plan of making 2020 the inaugural season. The pandemic delayed the launch by a year, but since then, Martin said, the team has steadily gained steam. 

In their first season in 2021, the Chili Peppers averaged around 900 fans per game and operated on a roughly $500,000 budget. This year, Martin said the team is anticipating 1,300 fans per game and for the budget to push $900,000. Their home stadium holds around 2,000. 

“It’s been phenomenal. When you build anything new, you just don’t know how receptive people are going to be,” Martin said. “It’s unbelievable what it’s turned into, and now we’re getting ready to do something that’s never been done.”

And while the Chili Peppers are in a more minor league than the Double-A Richmond Flying Squirrels, Martin said he’s often asked about the Diamond District proposal in the city of Richmond that would include a new ballpark for the Squirrels. Even though some might see the two teams as regional competitors, Martin said his team fully supports the Squirrels getting a new stadium. 

“We really hope that it happens because the Squirrels and us both breed the love of baseball and going out and being active in our communities. We want the Squirrels to get their new stadium,” he said. “It’s just going to help breed our success.”