Are the Savannah Bananas the cure for baseball’s ills?
SAVANNAH, Ga. — More than 90 minutes before the first pitch, it’s already clear this isn’t just any ol’ baseball game.
The crowd queued up outside the gate slowly begins to part, clearing the way for a pep band to guide the home team — adorned in bright yellow uniforms — through a rollicking, high-fiving gauntlet.
Once players reach the concourse outside historic Grayson Stadium, they break into a hastily choreographed dance routine accompanied by the tune Hey! Baby.
Welcome to Banana Land, home to baseball’s most outrageous — and entertaining — team, the Savannah Bananas. This amateur team in the little-known Coastal Plain League could be at least part of the cure for what ails the American pastime.
“You guys ready to have some fun?” said Bananas owner Jesse Cole, decked out in a yellow tux and top hat.
There’s the Banana Baby, an infant who is presented to the crowd like Simba in the The Lion King, lifted toward the sky by a parent while the entire team kneels in reverence around home plate.
There’s the Banana ‘Nanas, the senior citizen dance team, and the Dad Bod Cheer Squad. There’s Maceo, a choreographer who doubles as the team’s breakdancing coach.
There’s strutting, preening walks to the plate by the Savannah hitters, a breach of baseball etiquette that would draw an immediate beaning in the big leagues, but is an accepted part of the show in Banana Land.
There’s the players strolling through the stands between almost every half-inning — doling out roses, tossing T-shirts and hopping on top of the dugout to lead in song.
Oh yeah, there’s also a real-life baseball
game amid the shenanigans. (The Bananas, for what it’s worth, went into the weekend with the league’s best record at 12-4).
“I am so excited,” said Frances Squyres, who traveled from Los Angeles to attend her first Bananas game. “It looks like just one big party — that also has baseball going on.”
The Bananas might just be baseball’s most compelling story.
That’s no laughing matter.
Sure, some of the more over-the-top skits might be a bit much for the big leagues, and it’s hard to envision a way for an Ohtani or Harper to have the sort of up-close interactions that are possible in a college summer league.
But there are surely some lessons to be
gleaned from a team that is bucking the trend of baseball struggling to attract new fans and having so many young people view it as an out-of-touch relic favored by their grandparents.
“I definitely think if this was put on in MLB, it would help the game grow,” said Jestin Jones, a right-hander pitcher who plays collegiately at St. Leo. “This little town of Savannah, there’s more people coming here almost than to MLB games.”
Savannah has sold out every game at ancient Grayson Stadium since its founding in 2016, when it joined a league that essentially allows college players to stay in shape during their offseason.
The Bananas’ antics have brought nationwide attention, fans pouring in from more than 30 states (and even other countries) on any given night, and a waiting list for tickets that Cole claims has reached 50,000.
“We’re not in the baseball business. We’re in the entertainment business,” Cole said from beneath his yellow bowler hat, which goes well with his yellow tuxedo. “We can never be the best baseball team in the world. We’re not major league. But could we be the most fun team in the world?”
He attacks it with a fast-talking gusto befitting a natural-born salesman-slash-carnival barker who counts P.T. Barnum, Walt Disney, Blue Man Group and Cirque du Soleil among his inspirations.
Every nook of Grayson Stadium’s aging walls provide an opportunity to bemuse — and move merchandise. A storage room off the home clubhouse was transformed into a prop closet, where a collection of toilet seats hangs on the wall, bins are filled with wigs of all shapes, sizes and colors, and Cole shuffles quickly through a row of costumes that have no rhyme or reason.
When he recruits players to the Bananas, their personalities are just as important as their skills. The Bananas are a perfect fit for Savannah, a city on Georgia’s coast that gained renewed prominence in the 1990s with the book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.”
These days, Savannah is overrun most every weekend with tourists, party-goers and bachelorette parties.
“Every decision we make has the fans first,” Cole said.
The Bananas have quickly become a star attraction.
“Positive vibes. Make everybody laugh,” Maceo, the dancing coach, said of his role. “Banana Land is about weirdness — and I’m here for all of it.”