Meet Pottstown Scout, ‘the most viral travel baseball team ever,’ created by four South Jersey friends

The pandemic sent the friends home from college in the spring of 2020, when they decided to try their hand at viral videos. As high schoolers in South Jersey, they found success posting YouTube videos revealing the secrets of magic tricks. Now, it was time to conquer TikTok.

They hit tennis balls into someone’s yard, challenged a group of kids to tackle them for $100, and asked people if they thought baseball was easy before throwing fastballs past them. It all worked — the videos racked up millions of views.

And then someone had the idea to pretend to be a college scout at a Little League game. It sounded like a great idea. But they needed a school to represent.

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“I had a hat with the letter P on it, so we needed a place with the letter P,” Rob Schweitzer said. “I happened to play a bunch of baseball tournaments in Pottstown, so I blurted it out.”

They acted that afternoon at a Cherry Hill ball field as if they were evaluating talent for Pottstown University, a made-up college in a Montgomery County town where most of them had never been. The parents at the field bought it. There were scouts at the game. This TikTok post, just like the others, went viral in July 2020.

“I’m going to be honest, we did not look like scouts,” said Adam Yu. “I wore a shirt, shorts, a bucket hat, and a clipboard.”

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The fake baseball scout became a recurring bit for the South Jersey friends, a crew of 23-year-old college grads who have turned content creation into a full-time gig. The baseball scout videos they posted under the name CS99TV — a nod to their days exposing magic secrets — became so popular that they had to stop doing it because no one was falling for it anymore.

Maybe this buzz, they thought, could be something more. So the fake baseball scouts created a real team: the Pottstown Scout Team. They assemble rosters of elite youth baseball players from across the country, put them on a team for a weekend tournament, and create TikTok posts and YouTube videos while trying to win it all.

The teams are coached by the CS99TV guys and other content creators. They mic’d up the players for their first tournament in 2023 and Schweitzer tried to see how many Munchkins he could fit into his mouth while coaching first base at a 12-and-under event in Florida. It was a mixture of actual baseball and the gags the guys had become popular for. The team finished that weekend in second place, and the two YouTube videos combined for 3.6 million views. It worked.

“It was at that moment where we thought we had it,” Yu said. “We look at it as probably the most viral travel baseball team ever.”

Carter Nash was signing autographs earlier this year during his weekend with Pottstown when someone asked him to sign his forehead.

“I looked around like, ‘Is he for real?,” said Nash, a 14-year-old outfielder from South Carolina. “He said, ‘Do it. Do it. Do it.’”

The viral videos have built such an audience that Pottstown draws hundreds of fans to its games, some of whom travel more than eight hours to watch teenagers. They follow the Pottstown players around the tournament complex and crowd around their dugout during games, yelling and screaming. One player asked Yu if this is how it always is for Pottstown. It is, he said. A sleepy travel ball tournament comes alive.

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The kids feel like big leaguers, said Pottstown coach Nelly Gonzalez. They even sign foreheads.

“It was a Sharpie,” Nash said. “That’s why I asked, ‘Do you really want to do this?’ It was a crazy moment.”

The four friends from South Jersey — Yu, Schweitzer, and Mohan Suri grew up in Cherry Hill while Danny Vazquez is from Swedesboro — had experience with the old YouTube channel about magic tricks to understand algorithms and search engines. They knew how to go viral. They understood what content would be engaging and knew how to deliver it. It didn’t happen by accident.

“They’re really, really, really smart guys,” said Jered Goodwin, the vice president of scouting operations for Perfect Game, who helps build Pottstown’s rosters and places them in tournaments. “It’s been a lot of fun to watch. They are really down-to-earth people. They’re relatable to a bunch of ages and have great personalities to make people feel comfortable and confident.”

The players hit home runs while wearing GoPro cameras on their helmets and then dunk a basketball through a mini hoop after crossing home plate. They use custom gloves and swing colorful bats. The videos are then posted on CS99TV’s TikTok account, which has 3.3 million followers.

Pottstown expanded this summer to play in more tournaments and will have more age groups. It wants to enter two Pottstown teams into one tournament in hopes of an all-Pottstown showdown. It has partnered with baseball brands like Louisville Slugger and Wilson. What started with a joke on a Cherry Hill ball field became a career.

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“I never would’ve imagined that this is what we would be doing,” said Yu, who has a marketing degree from the College of New Jersey. “If you asked me five years ago what I would be doing right now, this wouldn’t be on the top of the list. Especially as a tennis player who never played baseball. But it’s a lot of fun. A lot of times when you go to college, your friends in high school aren’t your friends in college, and even more so after college. We’ve known each other since elementary school. It’s really cool to be around the same people.”

The biggest challenge in youth baseball, Goodwin said, is getting kids to keep playing when they turn 13 and move to a big league diamond. Maybe Pottstown — and its viral videos — can push kids to keep going.

“Pottstown has made it to where they can identify with a lot of those guys, and hopefully it helps kids get over that 13U hump,” Goodwin said. “Then it gets to 14U and 15U, and they’ll probably try out for their high school baseball team. If they make their team, not a lot quit, and hopefully this following just helps more kids reach the highest level in their competitive journey. They’ve been able to relate to kids, and hopefully it keeps the interest so they can push through those hard times.

“I think anybody in any sport would agree 100% that however they can get young players to have fun, like the sport, and continue to go to each next level, however you can get the young kids to go out and want to perform and want to stay with the sport, it’s a great thing.”

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The Pottstown teams do aim to win their tournaments — they’ve won five straight — but Yu said the main priority is to make sure the kids have fun. So far, they’ve done both.

“We preach, ‘Let the kids have fun, and the easier the game will be for them,’” Gonzalez said. “They’re having a good time, and there’s no stress. It’s crazy, but they play better than they usually do. No pressure.”

The team won a tournament earlier this year in Florida after Yu said everyone would get free sneakers if someone homered on his birthday. The CS99TV guys thought of the idea at 2 a.m., hours before first pitch, and hustled to find a store nearby that would be fully stocked. Carlo Rivero homered, and they all went to the mall. It was good content — the TikTok had 275,000 views — and the kids had fun.

“It matches what baseball should be at this point in time,” Yu said. “It’s not the old-traditional baseball back in the day. We feed off what the younger players like. It’s social media, content, giveaways, and all that fun stuff. The kids love it. Sports are meant to be fun, and baseball shouldn’t be an exception to that rule.”

The original fake scout video was filmed on an iPhone. It was nothing flashy. The South Jersey friends now hire a camera crew, as their productions are professional. They’ve turned their viral videos into a legitimate following and plan to grow their business even bigger. And Yu still hasn’t been to Pottstown.

“I’ve driven by it,” he said. “You know what, we’re putting Pottstown on the map.”