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J.J. Post, ESPN
At 7 p.m. on June 1 in Colonial Heights, Virginia, a first pitch will be delivered and a baseball game, like millions of others before it, will begin.
And then the sun will go down.
At which point a standard summer collegiate league contest will be transformed into a first-of-its-kind experience: cosmic baseball. The Tri-City Chili Peppers and Greenbrier Knights will swap out their usual colors for pink and neon green jerseys and play a ball game entirely illuminated by black lights.
Last June, while watching fans have fun with glow sticks as part of an “80’s neon and glow” promotional game, Tri-City owner Chris Martin had an unconventional idea — what if we turned the lights off?
“I kinda sat back and I started thinking ‘man, this would be really neat if the lights were off.’ Obviously we couldn’t turn the lights off in the stadium because of the issues with that, not being able to play baseball is kind of important,” Martin told ESPN.
Enter an alternative: black lights.
Initially, however creative, the idea of playing in the dark looked like a bust. The Chili Peppers consulted with multiple lighting companies about installing black lights at Tri City’s Shepherd Stadium, with the consensus being that the project wouldn’t be possible.
The consultants, JW Electric, Federated Lighting and Sonaray, promised to keep working on a potential solution. Eventually, they cracked the code.
“I thought [the idea] was dead, to be honest with you,” Martin said. “I didn’t think it was going to happen anymore. [They] came back to us in September and said ‘hey, we’ve got the black light, come check it out.’ It was everything I thought it would be and way more.”
Worlds First Ever Cosmic Baseball Game will be played June 1st. Don’t Miss being a part of History. pic.twitter.com/eXnDAH6H5A
— Tri-City Chili Peppers 🌶 (@GoChiliPeppers) May 2, 2024
Once illuminating the stadium was confirmed as doable, Martin and the team still had work to do. They began brainstorming how to alter other elements of the game to make the black light concept work best.
Baseballs were spray painted. Tucci Limited, a company that specializes in the production of wood bats, was enlisted to design the hitting hardware. There lied a challenge with the flashiest element of the cosmic baseball’s official unveiling — the uniforms.
The Chili Peppers began to solidify a design that would pop under a black light and stand alone as a stylish jersey during the day. Finding the right color palette proved a process. The colors pink, green, yellow and orange were all considered while determining the initial look.
The team settled on pink and a neon color that was born from combining both the green and yellow options. 3N2 Sports, a company that produces baseball and softball equipment, took the lead in creating the uniforms. As a part of the illumination testing process, 3N2 sent over plain uniforms with black lettering.
“We [wanted] to make sure this thing just works,” Martin said. “I don’t need this to look good, I just want to know if it works.”
The plain jerseys left room for some in-house creativity. Martin and his team came up with a design twist — neon pinstripes. With the help of brightly colored tape, Martin added a splash of yellow to the uniforms, initially receiving some uncertain reviews.
“Everyone’s saying ‘oh, that looks horrible,'” Martin recalled. “We ended up just pulling the trigger and saying ‘you know what, let’s do it, we’re running out of time.’ We went with these pink and yellow pinstripes which turned out really good and has been the most popular seller so far.”
With the lighting, equipment and uniforms all beginning to fall into place, the only step remaining was to figure out if the idea worked in practice — literally.
The team went through their usual warm-up paces in the new uniforms. The transition took a few moments to get used to, but once the team got a few reps in, it was just like a normal day at the ballpark.
Martin remembered a moment with catcher Jacob Lee, who will play at VCU next spring, during the warm-up. A pitcher threw a baseball with some motion, prompting Martin to ask the catcher: “Did he just throw you a curveball?”
Lee turned around, unfazed.
“He said ‘yeah man.’ I go, ‘you could catch that? I tried to catch that yesterday and I had no clue what I was doing.’ And he goes ‘Chris, this is what I do. I’m a catcher. I catch curveballs,'” Martin recalled.
Regardless of the game’s final score, the Chili Peppers will take pride in breaking ground in a new concept to see the game be played — neon uniforms, bats and curveballs all in tow.
“How many times in life do we have the opportunity to be a part of the first-ever anything?” Martin said.