BACK IN 2016 when the Savannah Bananas began playing at Grayson Stadium, I was one of their earliest and most supportive advocates in local media.
In the wake of the minor league Sand Gnats leaving town, I was thrilled that another team would call Grayson Stadium home and that the historic ballpark would be saved and preserved as an integral part of America’s baseball history.
The entertainment at the Bananas games was then as now paramount, and for many people was more important than the product on the field.
Back in the day I particularly enjoyed that so much of the entertainment at the games was quietly, gleefully subversive, very much the opposite of conservative baseball culture.
For example, there were all sorts of vaguely gender-bending aspects to the in-game entertainment, with hypermasculine tropes routinely satirized.
Smart people got it, and those early games had a really diverse crowd in attendance.
I thought the Bananas were doing God’s work bringing such fine-tuned social criticism to an audience consisting of so many mainstream white people sporting Nine Line t-shirts with guns and flags all over them.
But what made it great for me was the literal play on the field. Back then the Bananas played in a legitimate competitive college summer league, the Coastal Plains League.
The young men playing in this league did so purely for the love of the game, for the opportunity to swing real honest-to-God wood bats instead of the hokey aluminum bats used in the formal NCAA college ball they played during the school year.
Then everything changed.
Riding a viral tide of TikTok reels, the Savannah Bananas quickly became bigger than the league they played in, and indeed in a sense bigger than the sport itself.
The in-game entertainment, the fanatical crowds, the relentless social media presence far outstripping that of any actual Major League team – that all combined to make the next step not only irresistible, but inevitable.
The Savannah Bananas left the college league and went pro. On their own.
Owner Jesse Cole started his own “league,” owned all the teams in it, made up his own new rules, and formalized what everyone already knew: The Bananas were less of a sport than they are a whole experience.
The rest is history. Over the next decade the Bananas became a global, even iconic, brand. Savannah’s most famous export since Big Boi.
Despite living only a couple of blocks from Grayson Stadium, I had stopped going to Bananas games many years back as their popularity skyrocketed.
The tickets were too hard to get, and I felt like I had seen all the zany shenanigans between innings I could possibly digest.
I even wrote a story for The Savannahian that went viral, a breakup letter to the team I had loved.
In the neighborhood, our main experience with Bananas games were the constant fireworks, the parking issues, and the occasional threat of a much-too-low flyover of military jets that sound like the world is ending and scare everyone half to death.
The fact that the Bananas were no longer playing actual competitive baseball was the main thing, however. I just want to see an actual game, occasionally.
My unofficial "boycott" changed this past weekend.
Thanks to a very kind offer from some friends and family, I was recently able to attend a Bananas game, one of the playoffs before the “inaugural” Banana Ball Championship.
After several years away, the first thing I noticed were the physical changes within Grayson Stadium. The new left field bleachers, for example, are a welcome and sorely needed addition.
Replacing the charming, vintage scoreboard in center-right field with yet more bleachers seems like overkill though. I wouldn’t want to be out there so far away from everything.
But the biggest thing is the field of dreams itself. It's all Astroturf now. Every square inch of Grayson Stadium’s playing field is covered with Astroturf.
There are a handful of Major League parks that use Astroturf, but only because they either play indoors or in a retractable roof stadium, neither of which applies to the totally open-air Grayson Stadium.
I suspect this is partially to make things easier on rainy days, but also makes the various “trick plays” the Banana Ball teams use easier to pull off.
And… it also makes it easier to drive a car all over the stadium as part of in-game entertainment. Which is a thing at Banana Ball games.
The rest of the stadium has been respectfully preserved and upgraded only where needed. For example, the bathrooms are much better and cleaner now than they used to be.
As we took our seats on the third base side, I was struck by how amped-up the entertainment was compared to the first days of the Bananas.
The pre-game show lasted nearly two hours, with a constant – and I do mean constant – stream of elaborate introductions of all the various characters and groups involved in the entertainment.
Every single person got not just one, but at least two introductions on the big video screen, with their individual social media handles clearly promoted so that you have plenty of opportunities to hit “Follow” on your phone while you watch.
I can’t even list the full roster of supporting characters here, from the dancing Nanas to the Man-Nanas to the Banana Band to Princess Potassia (the Bananas’ version of a Disney Princess, without the lawsuit) to seemingly a cast of thousands more.
It just goes on and on for hours, long before any actual baseball begins.
It’s not that people aren’t paying attention. They are. That’s the wild part!
Many of the fans in attendance seem to go to almost every Bananas game. And they follow along the ritualized script of the pre-game show, sometimes mouthing the words.
Like a litany at a church service, the repetition is the point.
And the merch! Holy lord. Banana Ball is a merch juggernaut. People go to these games clad head-to-toe in Bananas gear, or whatever their favorite Banana Ball league team is.
I’ve never seen anything like it, and that’s coming from a guy with a whole drawer full of Iron Maiden t-shirts.
A lot of people have said the Savannah Bananas are like the Harlem Globetrotters, i.e., legitimate athletes playing a scripted form of the game for entertainment purposes.
But I think the Bananas are much closer to professional wrestling.
The emphasis on cartoonish individual characters and scripted “rivalries” with everyone being in on the joke is much closer to WWE than to a Globetrotters exhibition.
In pro wrestling, there’s a thing called a “heel” – the bad-boy villain wrestler who the audience loves to hate.
This night, the Savannah Bananas were playing the Banana Ball equivalent of the “heel,” the Party Animals.
Coming out to “Welcome to the Jungle,” tatted-up and wearing torn uniforms, the Party Animals are a clear crowd favorite. Their mascot is named "Pharty."
You get the picture. Our area on the third base line were clearly Party Animals partisans, and by about the fifth inning I was too.
Just like in wrestling, the "heel" of a Banana Ball game occasionally wins the match. But usually not.
And here we come to the most interesting part of the game for me: The actual play on the field.
Which is… actually pretty good.
Like WWE wrestlers and the Globetrotters, these guys are legit athletes and clearly know what they’re doing.
The “trick plays” Banana Ball is famous for usually involve some impressive glovework. The Bananas’ signature trick play, for example, is the second baseman catching a ground ball, making a behind-the-back throw to the first baseman, who makes a behind-the-back catch for the out.
And then the first base umpire – who for some reason is dressed like a ninja – does a full backflip as he calls the runner out at first.
The other main trick play used by both teams was sort of a volleyball move: Instead of catching a pop fly, the player tips the ball up into the air with his glove. Then a teammate makes a behind-the-back catch for the out.
This trick play is so routine that I wonder if the players’ gloves are modified to help them make the initial tip of the ball back into the air.
But even the non-trick stuff is solid. The hitters use proper line-drive technique and make good contact with the ball. You get to hear the crack of a real wood bat instead of those aluminum travesties.
The pitchers bring a little heat and have legit pickoff moves to first. I have no idea how many miles per hour they’re throwing, but they aren’t throwing cupcakes that are easy to hit.
The game is enjoyable to watch, but the problem is the music never stops. There is literally not one second of play time that isn't completely drowned out by ten-second song clips blared over the PA.
Perhaps for this reason, the crowd mostly seems nonplussed and underwhelmed by any action on the field not involving a trick play. It’s a shame, really.
The ending of the game I saw was – yep, you guessed it – a dramatic last-second win for the hometown Savannah Bananas. Are you shocked?
Envision this:
A Banana hitter sends a laser beam of a line drive to left field. The runner on second – the winning run – rounds third headed for home. If he crosses the plate, that’s ballgame.
The Party Animals’ left fielder makes a smooth play on the ball and in the same motion throws a zinger straight to the plate. Their cutoff man in the infield makes the catch for the tag just like you're coached to do.
And… he misses the tag on the baserunner.
He has the runner dead to rights. This close. Misses the tag.
Bananas win. The crowd goes wild.
It’s the elephant in the room. We’ve already made the comparisons to WWE and the Harlem Globetrotters, scripted shows with storylines.
So are Bananas games also rigged?
There’s no rule that says they can’t be. They own the league they play in, they make all the rules.
It wouldn’t be anything close to a crime, any more than the WWE is committing crimes, or the hapless Washington Generals are committing crimes when they lose to the Harlem Globetrotters for the thousandth straight time.
Baseball does seem pretty hard to rig. In basketball, for example, refs can look the other way when there’s a travel, make a sketchy foul call at a crucial moment, or not call a foul they should have. Many such cases.
But in baseball someone has to first put the ball in play somehow. And after that, baseballs move much faster and less predictably than a basketball.
What I’m saying is that, as in pro wrestling, the Banana Ball show takes almost as much effort and skill as the actual sport.
Bottom line: If it’s rigged, Banana Ball does a damn good job of it. Everybody leaves the game happy. After a half-day of solid entertainment and all-you-can-eat food, absolutely no one will be asking for a refund.
So will I go back to another Bananas game one day? Maybe.
If I do, will I go in a Party Animals t-shirt? Never say never.