Savannah Bananas bring ‘greatest show in sports’ to sold-out Nationals Park

They’re not the Harlem Globetrotters. But when the Savannah Bananas throw flaming pitches, send a stilts-wearing batter to home plate or choreograph dances on the pitcher’s mound, they can’t avoid that comparison.

The Bananas will bring their unique blend of entertainment and competitive baseball to Nationals Park on Saturday for a sold-out crowd of adoring fans.

“It’s the greatest show in sports,” said Jesse Cole, the team’s owner who often attends events in a banana-yellow tuxedo. “It’s nonstop entertainment. Some people describe it as a circus where a baseball game breaks out. It’s electric.”

The game, aptly titled “Banana Ball,” will feature unique rules to set it apart from baseball and prioritize fan engagement. There’s a two-hour time limit, mound visits and bunts are prohibited and batters can’t step away from the plate between pitches.

But the more extreme rule changes are what catch fans’ eyes. If a spectator catches a foul ball, it counts as an out. Batters can try to steal first at any time during an at-bat. Things get hectic.

“It’s a show and competitive baseball,” Bill Leroy, the Bananas catcher and team captain, said. ”Things that you’ve never seen before on a baseball field will happen.”

Those unique experiences change every night, Leroy claimed. Sometimes, the Bananas send eight pitchers to the mound for a synchronized dance. In another game, the outfielders might try to complete a backflip while catching fly balls.

The on-field antics have earned the Bananas an expansive following on social media. The team’s 8.7 million followers on TikTok dwarf even the biggest MLB teams — the New York Yankees only have 1.4 million followers. The Globetrotters, the closest analog for the Bananas’ blend of sports entertainment, have 722,000 followers on the short-form video platform.

That digital fame has created an unprecedented appetite for the Bananas. Cole says there are more than 2.7 million people on the waitlist for tickets. The Bananas have sold out every game since 2016 with no signs of slowing down.

“The demand is higher than I ever imagined it could be,” Cole said.

The Bananas were once a successful, though mostly unremarkable, collegiate summer team. But Cole noticed that fans were leaving games early, even when the score was tied in the late innings.

“There’s something fundamentally wrong with the game if you have a great game and fans are still leaving,” Cole said. “What could we do to create a game where fans always want more and don’t want to leave early?”

The former college baseball player took a microscope to the rules of baseball. He identified every area that slowed the game down. Then he added some rules of his own.

With each rule change, Cole asked, “Would the fans love this?”

After tinkering with the format, the former college baseball player took his team to Lander University for the first-ever Banana Ball game.

“The first time we played it, I knew we had something special,” Cole said. “I just saw the future for us, where we could actually control the experience and make it something special. … We went all in.”

The Bananas stopped playing amateur baseball in 2022 to start playing Banana Ball exhibitions full-time.

But the product on the field isn’t the only thing that sets the Bananas apart in the crowded sports landscape.

“We’re trying to be different, not better,” Cole said.

The Bananas gave themselves a “fan-first” identity to set themselves apart. Tickets at the team’s home field in Savannah are all-inclusive — the cost of the tickets covers food and drink in addition to a seat for the show.

When they hit the road, the Bananas had to drop the all-inclusive tickets, but team officials said they still try to put fans first. While food isn’t included, the Bananas cover ticket taxes and fees, so fans only pay the $40, $50 or $60 price tag to attend a game.

“We just want to create an experience that we would love as fans. That’s how we do everything. Every decision is about whether the fans would love this,” the team’s owner said. “That’s why we have no convenience fees, no ticket fees, no service fees.”

The fan-first approach has earned the team thousands of rabid fans around the country. When the Bananas come to town, fans of all ages suit up in yellow garb and head to the ballpark. For Leroy, playing baseball for those fans is the most fulfilling job on the planet.

“As a kid, I always dreamed of playing in major league ballparks in front of a lot of people and impacting them, making them feel something,” Leroy said. “Banana Ball is everything I dreamed of and wanted in the game of baseball, to spread joy and energy through the sport.”

Saturday’s trip to the District is the latest stop in the Bananas’ 26-city 2024 world tour. The schedule features visits to six MLB ballparks, including games earlier this year at Boston’s Fenway Park and Houston’s Minute Maid Park.

The tour has been an overwhelming success, according to Cole. The franchise hosted sold-out games at each stop, and Cole expects more than 40,000 fans at Nationals Park on Saturday.

But the Bananas owner claims that this year’s world tour, the team’s fourth, is only the beginning.

“It’s just the start,” he said. “We’re in the first inning.”