Before the Savannah Bananas took on the Party Animals in the final outing of the 2024 Banana Ball season at LoanDepot Park in Miami last Saturday, there was a pre-match weigh-in. One player from each squad emerged from the dugout, shirtless, torsos oiled up, and began flexing for the cameras. The sole purpose of this serious break with hallowed baseball tradition seemed to be to allow two gurning opponents to square off, replicating moves from the Maniac scene in the 1983 movie Flashdance. Their every outrageous shimmy was cheered lustily by 37,000 delighted fans and set the bizarre and gleeful tone for the rest of the evening.
One of the pitchers threw from the mound while wearing a bicycle helmet, another player tottered around the infield on stilts that made him 10′ 9″ tall yet somehow still able to snag a base hit and sprint to first. There was twerking, trick plays abounded, fly balls landed softly in deftly upturned caps, and entire squads performed choreographed dance routines along the baselines. Amid all the crowd-pleasing stunts and shameless capering, the Bananas roster performed a boy band-style rendition of Simple Minds’s Don’t You Forget About Me midway through the fifth inning. And brought the house down. Not something that happens too often at LoanDepot Park.
Ordinarily, the stadium is the half-empty home to Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins, who, over the course of 81 games this past season, drew a paltry average attendance of 13,425 and never sold the venue out once. Last Saturday night, the place was packed to the rafters by fans of all ages drawn to a more vaudevillian version of the so-called national pastime. In this turbo-charged edition of the sport, so much happens so fast that very few of those present are tempted to oscillate from their phones to the field. They wouldn’t dare. This is blink and you’ll miss an outrageous backflipping outfielder or a breakdancing catcher stuff.
Eight years ago, the Bananas were born as a standard-issue lower minor league outfit offering collegiate players nursing faint professional ambitions the opportunity to play summer ball in the Coastal Plain League. Having sold one season ticket in the first two months of their existence, Jesse Cole, co-owner of the team with his wife Emily, and a one-time prospect himself, happened upon an alternative business plan.
“Imagine what the best possible fan experience is and do that,” he decided. “Don’t settle for the way things have been done before.”
From then on, every Bananas game included a smorgasbord of circus antics and showbiz pageantry, including dancing grandmas called The Banana Nanas and a retinue of Dadbod male cheerleaders. People came to see young talented outfielders make spectacular catches and stayed for the part of the evening when they collectively belted out Britney Spears’s Hit Me Baby One More Time while wearing kilts. Very soon, the team was selling out 4,000 tickets for every home game, and, due to the viral impact of videos of their comic chicanery on social media, shipping their garish yellow merchandise all over the world.
Taking up offers to bring the Banana Ball carnival on the road, their cross-country jaunts shattered so many box office records that they had to withdraw from the Coastal Plain League altogether. Next year, they will barnstorm in 18 Major League venues, including two-night stints at storied Yankee Stadium and Fenway Park. Beyond razzmatazz and gimmickry, fans come for a truly unique experience. Rules have been carefully amended so games never last more than two hours and somebody sitting in the bleachers can affect the result by catching a foul ball and forcing an out. Once in every match, a lucky supporter also gets the chance to challenge an on-field call. VAR gone mad.
More than one million paid in to watch the Bananas touring America this year. A number set to double in 2025. More impressively, a whopping 98 per cent of fans stayed until the end of their games, scared to miss out on any of their epic tomfoolery. Many obviously relish an evening at the ballpark that is a lot more lighthearted and fun because Major League Baseball itself is the most po-faced of all pro sports, an entity so obsessed with musty tradition and arcane 19th century ritual it frowns upon players showing excess exuberance after hitting home runs.
Witness the recent pillorying of the New York Mets’s Jesse Winker for pumping his fists and throwing his helmet after hitting a walk-off homer in a victory over the Baltimore Orioles. Imagine somebody evincing such natural joy and daring to celebrate securing a win for his team. Tut-tut.
Against that stultifying background, Cole’s genius was to see an opportunity for creating an environment where players and fans could enjoy the spectacle with the shackles off. The old Harlem Globetrotters’s basketball, sport-as-entertainment concept applied to the modern diamond. And, in the ultimate irony, his revolutionary innovations have been so successful that Major League clubs are now studying how the Bananas do such a great job engaging with people, especially those from the younger demographic. At a time when the average baseball nut is a crusty white male fast approaching 60, teams are desperate to figure out how he got kids excited to go see a game again.
“Whatever’s normal,” said Cole, explaining his approach, “do the exact opposite.”
He did. They won’t.
