There's nothing quite like a warm summer night and baseball under the lights, but what about a warm summer night and baseball under no lights……….or at least different lights? That's the best way to describe what's about to happen in Colonial Heights, Va. The Tri-City Chili Peppers, a college summer team in the Coastal Plain League, entered a new era on June 1, when they hosted what’s been dubbed as “Cosmic Baseball” — a game played under black lights. That means a glowing ball, glowing bats, glowing bases, glowing uniforms, glowing……..well, just about everything. Despite concerns of safety issues, organizers say it’s as safe as any other baseball game. “You can see everything extremely well,” said Chris Martin, owner of the Chili Peppers. The game began with the Chili Peppers throwing glow sticks into the stands to give fans another layer of fun. Naturally, the glow sticks were a big hit. The stadium, which has a 2,000-seat capacity, had 18 500-watt black lights installed around the field, using brackets to attach them to normal light poles. The event wasn’t cheap, with well over $100,000 being invested in the glow-in-the-dark game. There's one minor limitation to glow-in-the dark baseball: the glow of the ball makes it hard to pick up spin, so organizers were concerned about players hitting a curveball, as well as judging fly balls in the outfield. To remedy that, the Chili Peppers got a baseball with seams that glow in a different color than the rest of the ball. Videos of the first cosmic baseball game went viral online, and now tickets for the next two games on June 28 and July 20 are sold out. People seem to love the novelty of this unusual take on a classic sport and some have even called it the future of baseball. Time will tell if this is anything more than a gimmick, but it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.
