If the phrase ‘America’s pastime’ implies that baseball carries an expiration date, or that the sport is inherently lagging or past its prime, Chris Martin is here to transform how the game is played as well as experienced by fans.
Martin, the owner of the Tri-City Chili Peppers in Colonial Heights, is the first inventor I ever interviewed professionally. Writing about him for Style’s 40 Under 40 issue last year, I hadn’t heard much about his relatively new invention, Cosmic Baseball — played just like the regular game but with surreal, state-of-the-art twists, namely, custom-designed black lights and UV reflective gear.
Increased competition from sports with faster gameplay, especially considering the waning attention span of the general public, hasn’t done baseball any favors. Summer leagues and farm teams have long been experimenting with new tactics and strategies aimed at improving gameplay flow and renewing fanfare. In 2023, Major League Baseball adopted a shorter pitch clock, fewer mound visits and bigger bases in hopes of livening the action. The following season saw its highest numbers for regular season attendance since 2017, which may indicate the general direction of baseball likely to come.
But one need look no further than the Coastal Plain League and Martin’s Tri-City Chili Peppers to see this old-school pastime in an all new light. Starting last season, under Martin’s leadership, the Chili Peppers gave baseball the modern glow-up many fans have been waiting for, but nobody could have seen coming. [A recent NBC News story reported that, in its second season, “Cosmic Baseball has been flooding social media feeds and currently boasts a 300,000- to 400,000-person waitlist” while Major League Baseball has been taking notice and backing the initiative.]
Speaking to Martin last winter, before going into the second season of Cosmic play, he stressed that, despite the sweeping success of their inaugural season — a total sell-out, garnering international attention from media and sports enthusiasts — the team was still learning as it went, most often from its own mistakes. How many glow-in-the-dark Tri-City Chi Peps jerseys will we sell? How do we travel to other cities with all these lights?
Learning on the fly
A salient lesson emerged last season for Martin, one that is likely to remain if their patent — which is currently pending — is approved and they can expand their Cosmic treatment to other sports. He quickly learned to place a premium on entertainment, fan interaction and the immersive musical experience integrated into the game.
“It’s evolved every day,” he says. “We were okay with changing the game, changing the music, changing the entertainment to try and figure out what works best for our fans.”
Re-envisioning the game in bursts of magenta, orange, acid green, peacock blue and burgundy neon color, Cosmic Baseball is also played way faster. Organizers adopted their own rules to assure minimal lollygagging, such as no bunting or bases on balls. And unlike traditional games, in the Cosmic Baseball universe, the music never stops. Games are fully soundtracked, top to bottom, by the team’s resident maestro, DJ Treblemaker.
[In terms of road games, Cosmic Baseball has taken its popular show on tour for big field games in Texas, Tennessee and Durham, NC., and they have an upcoming game scheduled at Polar Park in Worcester, Mass. on Aug. 16].
I needed to go see it for myself, so I arranged to catch this season’s opener. Since I couldn’t be on the field, I reasoned the next best place to witness all the action at a Cosmic Baseball game would be directly behind the batting cage, from inside the DJ booth with Jon Scott, aka DJ Treblemaker.
The night before the season opener we spoke by phone and his excitement for the game was palpable. “Think of the biggest, best party you could be at with nonstop music — but then there’s a baseball game going on in the middle,” he says.
I asked him if there was anything I should do to prepare.
“I’ll give you a little secret, nothing that I do is planned except for the players’ music, so tomorrow I’m gonna go into this thing, right? I have no clue what my first song is gonna be,” he says. “So don’t come with any expectations … My first time ever seeing Cosmic — my God, I didn’t know how to react, but I still get the same feeling every time.”
Hanging with the DJ
Driving down I-95 toward Petersburg, I reminisce about other personal firsts.
The only one I’m comfortable sharing with readers — despite risk to my reputation as a music writer — is my first concert: “Weird Al” Yankovic’s Bad Hair Tour in ‘96. I remember little from that night, other than its consequences. I fell for it, the whole concert deal; I was fully in Yankovic’s thrall, swayed by the renewed familiarity of songs that, even as a 13-year-old, I recognized as familiar cultural touchstones. Maybe parody is pop music’s pastime?
Before the opener, there’s a block party happening at the front gate of the Chili Peppers’ home field at Shepherd Stadium. DJ Treblemaker is already at it, playing upbeat pop hits you’d expect at an early afternoon public gathering geared toward families, and more generally, those with a fondness for flair and celebration. Players mix with the crowd and pose for selfies. There’s an arm wrestling competition and conga line.
DJ Treblemaker, or Jon Scott, holds a bachelor of art degree in music from Virginia State University and has many innings under his belt as a catcher. Now he’s found himself in the rare position of marrying what he loves most with what he’s best at.
“It’s a good gig. I wouldn’t trade this [job] for anything. I’ve always wanted to play the big festivals and get on TV, you know? As a musician that’s what you live for, right? But I couldn’t ask for any other job like it. As a former baseball player, now I get to actually go to these minor league stadiums some of my friends have played in, but they’ve never played in front of a sold-out crowd like we do.”
When the game crowd starts to pour in, DJ Treblemaker begins carrying a PA mixer from the parking lot, not overly concerned that the house system isn’t yet set up, but still scrambling to resume the soundtrack he’d been doggedly providing for several hours. More than one player approaches him through the net behind home plate with notes for their “walk up” songs played during their at bats.
Treblemaker describes the next portion of the game as a slow burn, but I’m struck by the kinetic energy already, especially among the park’s employees who are all fully engaged and multitasking. [The stadium holds about 2,000 people.] Numerous fans approach the DJ booth to ask where their seats are located, holding out their ticket stubs for him to read.
“People have no idea what they’re in for,” he says rifling through a bag of speaker cables. “They think we just turn out the lights.”
For Cosmic games this season, the Chili Peppers have branched off to form an internal opponent in the Glowmojis. A heel from that team gets on the mic in front of their dugout to address the crowd with some stand-up comedy. He opens with a homophobic dig at Pride Month off the bat. “That was a bad joke,” Treblemaker says to nobody in particular.
Punchlines aimed at the military — who it’s evident are on duty for the game — and the Chili Peppers similarly flounder. Next up, in the pregame programming, is a dating game with Cory Cubano, followed by a cartwheel competition to determine who’s playing as the home team. The Glowmojis win that honor.
An umpire dressed like Santa Claus cues to the announcer who tells Treblemaker, “Five-and-a-half minutes ‘til first pitch,” prompting him to play a Metallica-into-Motley Crue medley met by a tepid response from the crowd.
The first pitch of the first game during daylight hours is hit for a home run. The DJ plays “U Can’t Touch This” by MC Hammer into Darius Rucker’s “Wagon Wheel,” purposefully cutting out the song to highlight and encourage the fan singalong that is occurring. People continue to attempt placing song requests and asking Treblemaker for directions.
An air horn sounds and a Wizard, Chik-fil-A Cow, Duck, Dolphin, Alligator and Chicken storm the field to Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 9 in D Minor.” The crowd’s enthusiasm is mounting. A crack of the bat gets gasps — people are there for baseball, after all.
Someone asks the DJ for a Band-Aid. Another asks for his playlist. The music gets louder and louder. There’s an intermission at dusk, when the final preparation for Cosmic Baseball takes place on the field. That’s when a green powder that is UV reactive is sprinkled on the field like space dust with precision by a large, ball-capped crew.
DJ Casper’s “Everybody Clap Their Hands” is playing when Lt. Governor Winsome Earle-Sears throws out the first pitch. The music stops for the first time to allow for a New Years Eve-styled countdown. The lights are cut and there’s a pregnant pause before the black lights power on. Treblemaker’s soundtrack resumes, competing with confetti cannons spraying the crowd and applause.
The crowd is aglow and abuzz. Confetti blows across the field. Treblemaker eats a chicken finger that’s gotta be cold by now. There’s a man down as a trainer rushes the field to see after a player who dove for an incandescent line drive up the middle. The concerned crowd goes quiet as they wait to see if the player will rise. He does.
“Let’s get this place bumpin’ again,” Treblemaker says as he cues up Gummy Bear. “Hakuna Matata” from “The Lion King” gets a burst of cheers. The DJ claps his hands, “Ahah!”
A young child calls out “Dee-jay, dee-jay,” and approaches the booth to hand DJ Treblemaker a glow stick, which he tucks in the band of his cap without missing a beat; I can’t think of anything sweeter. By contrast, the Chi Peps dominating win over the Glow Emojis, by a score of 27 to seven, is pure carnage.
“County fair meets Wrestlemania”
In all, the experience was positively frantic with the operative word being ‘positive.’
With so much action to account for, I’d liken the show to some amalgam of a more lit county fair and Wrestlemania; an overload of stunts and dance moves, both choreographed and impromptu, as well as memorable people watching — and a baseball game, too.
DJ Treblemaker’s selections throughout the melee provide an emotional narrative and thread to bind the otherwise scattershot action together, blurring the line between the public in the bleachers and the players on the field; all gathered together, at their brightest.
“Baseball is a beautiful game,” he says. “And when you get the right music going with it, and crowd interactions and sing-a-longs and dancing, it’s a feeling you can’t beat.”
After six hours at Shepherd Stadium, I still feel charged and am already imagining the next game I hope to catch: what to wear, who to invite. Could I persuade DJ Treblemaker to play one of my records during a fever-pitch moment on the playing field, met by the gasps and cheers of fans, ending in a structurally perfect dayglow-lit wave?
Alas, there are only two local Cosmic games remaining this summer with a lottery system in place to attend the otherwise sold-out games. Next season there are plans for more games, and longer out-of-state tours with more stops. Eventually, it’s easy to imagine a larger league comprised of regional franchises.
But for now, Cosmic Baseball is strictly a product of Virginia.
“We plan to expand Cosmic Baseball to limits we have never gone to before … to visit cities across the U.S. and into larger stadiums,” Martin explains. “Everything has been fan-driven. We see the demand all across the country and we are excited to take Cosmic Baseball to many more fans in 2026.”
It wouldn’t be America if offers weren’t already on the table to capitalize on this independent, homegrown venture. But Martin says Cosmic Baseball is not for sale.
“For us, being independent is about controlling the product,” he tells me. “The musical piece, the interaction with fans and players becomes so important. Ultimately, you are creating your own game. You abide by nobody else’s rules but your own.”
To learn more about Cosmic Baseball and check for upcoming games, visit the Tri-City Chili Peppers website.
