In the heart of the most populated metropolitan area in the country, the world’s most entertaining baseball show came to town at the end of May to provide their brand of America’s national pastime to thousands of fans and locals. The Savannah Bananas, the independent baseball club that created their own form of playing baseball with some modifications and all the same gizmos of hits, runs and RBIs, arrived to visit Southern California on their 2025 Banana Ball World Tour, which is taking them to stadiums and ballparks that are being packed with fans in all the seats to see the most entertaining brand of baseball in their lifetimes. The Bananas are visiting plenty of stadiums with large capacities that they have never played in before on their tour, such as NFL stadiums and MLB ballparks that dwarf the crowds that they performed to in their early days of touring. With owners Jesse & Emily Cole, the Bananas have become a hot-ticket on the market and have been so overloaded with interest that they have to hold online ticket lotteries to determine the lucky amount of fans that can attend each of their games. This was something that my dad decided to do when he saw that the Bananas were coming to play at Angel Stadium for the 2025 World Tour. He saw this announcement in the fall of 2024 and chose to enter his and my names into the ticket lottery, which he was able to do so. When the results came in, we got lucky and had won two tickets to go see the Savannah Bananas play at the Big A for the final weekend of May 2025. We won tickets for one game, which was their first game of the two-game set in Anaheim. I was very surprised and happy as I was given some Bananas gear(a shirt with the grinning banana with a bat, a car sticker with that same logo and a can holder that I’ve barely used). Now we just had to wait to see where exactly our seats for the game would be.

We eventually received the information that our seats would be located somewhere in the lower upper deck sections down the left-field line(401-409). In their down to the last hours style, the Savannah Bananas website didn’t send Dad a message for where exactly our seats would be until hours before the game began so that we could have them scanned at an entry point. The seats were in Section 402, right behind the left field foul pole. The view was still good in spite of the foul pole being slightly in the view. The Big A is a good enough stadium where most of the seats have an unobstructed view to those with medium eyesight and thankfully my eyesight is mostly superb in my young age. So, we would be on our way to see the Bananas play in an evening game as the sun was setting on a hot and steamy day in Orange County.

Before I get into the experience of attending a Banana Ball game at my hometown ballpark, the background of this entertainment baseball team will be explored. The ballclub was inherited from an old collegiate summer league ball team in Savannah, Ga. that went defunct after the 2015 season by Jesse Cole, a former pitcher that never made it to the big leagues due to health issues with his throwing shoulder. Jesse and his wife Emily Cole bought the team and a naming contest was held for what the new mascot of the team would be. It turned out that the name was something that rung well with the city’s name. The team was hilariously awarded the nickname of Savannah Bananas and the mascot of the team would be a muscular banana-man by the name of Split, who wears some radical sunglasses as well. Being in the Coastal Plain League, the Bananas competed from 2016 to 2021 in the league where they had players either aid themselves in their collegiate careers or continue their baseball careers after failing to advance in their careers beyond the college level. They played under mostly old-school baseball rules at a ballpark that dates back to the early 20th century called Historic Grayson Stadium. With an intimate capacity and with a smattering of fans who attended due to them being happy for a baseball team of any level playing in their local area(the Atlanta Braves are the closest MLB team to Savannah), the Bananas did well in drawing crowds and they ended up winning the Coastal Plain League title in 2021. But after winning the title, the club’s owners were faced with an unfortunate situation when it came to their financial situation in the Coastal Plain League. More specifically, it was the state of Grayson Stadium and repairs that needed to be made at the ballpark to keep it running. The Coles were faced with an ultimatum: sell the team to someone who might not be as interested in running a Summer League club or reset and absorb the financial burden of owning a team playing in a low-capacity ballpark that wasn’t selling out every game.

They decided to stick to owning the Bananas and invest in the team. Heading into 2022, the Coles needed to make a decision regarding their roster and playing schedule. The Bananas decided to go independent of the Coastal Plain League for at least a few months before their season began to perform their own “experiment” on the game of baseball itself. Jesse Cole decided that it was time to challenge the old, long-established rules of baseball in order to make the game more of an entertainment product than a sports viewing option. Mr. Cole decided to rebrand the style of baseball that the Savannah Bananas played to be of a more eccentric style tailored to entertaining the people in the seats of the ballparks that they play in. He also decided to rebrand himself as a carnival-barker wearing a light yellow suit with a yellow top hat. Decked out in Banana Yellow, Jesse Cole would invent a new format of playing the game of baseball that was centered on time, convenience and providing in-game entertainment to the thousands of fans in attendance for their games. He christened it as “Banana Ball”.

The rules of Banana Ball are simple but complex. They span from restrictions on disengaging from an at-bat(a tactic of stalling and lollygagging that players in the big leagues and other levels of the sport have abused for years without end) and bunting(something deemed boring by Cole and his confidants) to running on ball four instead of walking to first base. Also included are rules for using pinch-runners whenever you want with a man on base and also using a “Golden Batter” rule once a game when you could have one of the players in your lineup(or not in your lineup) come up to bat at any time(usually in a high-stakes situation with a game on the line). Then, there is the redefining of the scoring system, where a team has to score enough runs to win an inning and when an inning is won by a team, they are awarded a point. Whoever has the most “points” at the end of the game wins. The term points is usually reserved for other sports that baseball competes with for popularity like basketball and football, but in Banana Ball points are a thing. There is also a centered focus on time, as the entire game(along with breaks in the action in-between innings) has a countdown clock of two hours long. Completing a baseball game in two hours used to be a normal thing back in the old days, but with a lack of stellar pitching and the usage of pitching changes when innings are going on(along with all the unnecessary commercial breaks adding up), game time average in MLB and college had gone up big time in recent years. In Banana Ball, time is redefined in terms of it meaning more in terms of completing a game within a reasonable timespan for the fans to stay in their seats for the entire game experience and not leave the ballpark early(something that occurs way too much at MLB games, including the many Angels games I’ve been to over the years). So, that means the players have to play the game at a faster pace, which is why disengaging is disincentivized for pitchers and batters. Also, there’s no “mound visits” allowed at all. These revolutionary changes stop the in-game delays that baseball fans have been cursed with watching for decades. No more of that. Finally, there are two more special rules that Jesse Cole and his group of baseball fun workers decided to add in order to make the game more spicy and exciting. If a ball goes into foul territory and a fan makes a clean, unassisted catch of the ball, then the batter who hit the ball into the stands is out. Allowing the fans to be a direct part of the game and not just cheering and watching is pure genius. The other rule of excitement is that if a game is tied in points scored after the minimum amount of innings is played, the game goes into “Showdowns”, where both teams will have a chance to win the game via walk-off. The pitching team is only allowed to have one fielder on the field along with the pitcher and catcher when facing off against the one hitter and the fielder must be positioned on the outfield grass(the pitcher and catcher have the infield all to themselves. A Showdown usually sets up for an exciting ending for the fans in attendance, a chance for a batter to be a hero and win via an inside-the-park home run(and run is definitely a bigger part of the terminology in Banana Ball). One last rule in this bizarre version of baseball that I must explain is that when a pitcher walks a batter, the batter is allowed to sprint out of the batter’s box and all the fielders of the opposing team have to touch the ball in a quick, relay style as the batter is running the basepaths. If there is a runner on base when the “Ball Four Sprint” happens, then that runner usually comes around to score at home plate(especially if that runner is at second or third base). So, those are the rules that Jesse Cole established for Banana Ball. Got it?

The Bananas’ ownership decided to launch a “Banana Ball World Tour”, where the team would go play in front of thousands of fans at ballparks that would agree to hold their games as events. That occurred in the spring of 2022, but before the Banana Ball craze is explored, we must explore the opposing team that the Bananas faced for their first few years of competition. The Savannah Bananas have been called baseball’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters, the world-famous basketball entertainment team that launched in 1926 in that neighborhood of New York City and featured famous dribbling moves and behind-the-back zaniness for fans in arenas throughout the world to behold. In order to play a game, there must be an opponent. The opponent for the Globetrotters are the Washington Generals, who are always tasked with playing to lose against their more popular and beloved opponents. The Generals usually lose by a boatload of points to the Globetrotters because they are usually filled with players who cannot play the game of basketball that well. For Banana Ball, Jesse Cole decided to make things more even and fair for both teams that he helped form in the months leading up to the first-ever Banana Ball games in 2022. He decided to place the players who made the final cut of tryouts onto the Bananas and their “Generals” opponent, who would simply be called the “Party Animals”. With a monkey wearing shades and a bow tie with a banana peel on the head, the Party Animals would have just as much of a chance to win a Banana Ball game as the Bananas would. The only problem for them was that they would always be the “visiting team” whereas the Bananas are always the “home team”. The team that bats first in every inning against the team that bats last in every inning. That’s a rough deal, which puts pressure on the Party Animals players to run up the score as much as possible in order to set the bar pretty high for the Bananas to either match or pass in the bottom half of the inning. So, it’s safe to say that when an inning goes scoreless or both teams score the same amount of runs in an inning, no points will be awarded. The Bananas started out playing only 7-inning long games in order to squeeze in all the content of entertainment that they provide in between innings, just to be on the safe side of not stretching out a game too long.

The Bananas had actually tested out Banana Ball before in prior years, but they didn’t really show it or market it to a massive audience of fans until the 2022 World Tour. The first-ever Banana Ball game between the Bananas and Party Animals occurred on Mar. 4, 2022 at Historic Grayson Stadium, where a load of fans attended and an incredible game took place. The Bananas won a few innings and the Party Animals did the same. The game went into Showdowns and the Bananas won on a thrilling walk-off. There was plenty of in-game entertainment, from baby races to a group of old ladies dancing and even the players joined in with their own antics. The cast of the Bananas extended far beyond the players themselves, as Jesse Cole was obviously the head of operations announcing to the fans in attendance(and those watching online) all the in-game activities and rules of the game as well. The Bananas also have a social media team that is laser-focused on creating in-game content to be shown on platforms such as Instagram and TikTok in order for people not necessarily interested in baseball to view. Their social media strategy has worked out quite well, to say the least, with in-game stunts such as choreographed dance moves while a pitch occurs, having a dancing umpire(his name is Vincent Chapman and he is a big bundle of dance moves, literally) and having a player come up to the plate with a flaming bat. The players on the Bananas are what really make the show go round and they are talented in a lot of different ways. You have catcher Bill Leroy, who always gets the crowd going with clapping their hands in synchronicity when he comes up to bat. You have pitcher Kyle Luigs who pitches with a cowboy hat on sometimes. You have the fastest guy on the team Malachi Mitchell, who wears a yellow astronaut helmet when running on the basepaths and has his nickname “Flash Tha Kid” on the back of his jersey. You have Mat Wolf with his unconventional pitching style that sometimes has him pitch with his pants down(copying the gaffe done by Steve Lyons back in the 1990s at first base). Then, you have Dakota “Stilts” Albritton, who comes into the game walking on giant, tall stilts. Either as a pitcher or a hitter, Stilts always tries his best to put on a show the best way he can; standing tall and walking carefully on the tall poles that he stands on. So, there are plenty of other notable Bananas players, but those are the ones that I can remember the most from their five-episode miniseries called “Bananaland”, which is available to view on ESPN+ and it shows the entirety of their first ever Banana Ball World Tour. Jesse Cole gives us an inside, behind-the-scenes look of the operations and plenty of Bananas/Party Animals players are interviewed along with a lot of the workers that make the peels real sweet to pull down for the Bananas, who have only grown in popularity ever since their first tour that took them playing home games in Savannah to games on the road in southern cities such as Daytona Beach, Fla and Montgomery, Ala. They actually closed out their first World Tour facing an actual team of independent league minor leaguers in Kansas City, Kan. The modern-day Kansas City Monarchs is derived from the Negro Leagues club that produced famous African-American baseball stars such as Satchel Paige and Jackie Robinson. The Bananas actually visited the National Negro Leagues Museum across the state line in Missouri and they got a tour from the Museum’s president Bob Kendrick. Jesse Cole takes motivation from the Negro Leagues’ style of play in order to make Banana Ball as entertaining as possible. He encourages all the players on both teams to perform trick plays when fielding ground balls or making a play on a lousy fly ball so that the fans can be more entertained. Safe to say that there have been hundreds of trick plays recorded by the Bananas and Party Animals over the past few years of Banana Ball.

On their tours as well, the Bananas have featured former big leaguers coming up to bat or pitch. At the beginning of their time playing Banana Ball, they had Bill “The Spaceman” Lee, a 75-year old former pitcher, appear for them a few times. They also have had former major leaguers such as Jake Peavy, Jonny Gomes, Johnny Bench, Johnny Damon and Josh Reddick appear in games that they have played on their World Tours. The Bananas were also initially led by former third baseman Eric Byrnes, who decided to come out of the studio to be the “coach” for this group of ragtag ball players looking to continue their dream. Byrnes also made a couple of plate appearances himself. Over the past few years, the Bananas have been selling out ballparks small and big and after the 2024 World Tour, they decided to take things to the next level with a tour of major league stadiums for baseball(and football). The Savannah Bananas announced the dates for their 2025 World Tour in late 2024 and my dad saw this as a chance for us to go see an entertaining brand of baseball that we have longed to see in live-action. Seeing Angels games throughout the years was fine and there have been some incredible experiences that we have had in Anaheim as well as seeing some all-time greats play. But it was time to try something new and go to a rare event at Angel Stadium that wasn’t a home game for our favorite team. And we won the ticket lottery and waited until the final hours to know where our seats would be for the Banana Ball game occurring on the evening of Fri. May 30, 2025.

We left in the early afternoon hours after finding out our seats were in Section 402 down the left field line and the foul pole was in front of us. But we didn’t mind that, we were glad to just have a great view from the lower upper deck. After having our tickets scanned, we got to see the world famous Banana Band playing their tunes with their tubas and saxophones and trombones. We saw that the band was set up right in front of the home plate gate, so that was nice. We saw that there were plenty of food trucks and merchandise stands set up on the pavement. After buying a couple of smoothies, I jumped into the long merchandise line and it only got longer behind me. Thankfully it was like two hours before the game started and Dad joined in the line after getting our smoothies. Once we finally got to the front of the line, we went to purchase some merch. I bought a yellow Savannah Bananas logo shirt(I was already wearing a blue one that I got for Christmas) and also decided to get my hands on Jesse Cole’s novel “Fans First”. I can’t wait to read out of that book. Dad ended up getting a large replica Bananas baseball(the ball is pretty large and hard and it’s probably not for throwing around). As we looked to enter the stadium gates, we saw a long line of people who were standing single-file to meet the man behind the Bananaland experience himself in Mr. Jesse Cole. I decided not to go in line to meet him, but I did take a pic of him and the line of fans from afar. So, we walked into the stadium and we walked up the ramps to the upper deck(where we have not sat in as much over the past few years for Angels games) and we made our way onto the upper deck at the Big A. Walking through the slim and slender platform(an unfortunate problem with the upper deck’s structure at my hometown ballpark), we found our way to a section of the stadium that we haven’t sat in for a long time(or ever in my case) in the left field upper deck down the foul pole. Thankfully, we were in the shade and if we had been in the right field upper deck(or right field pavilion seats), we would be straight in the sun and that was something we wouldn’t be able to bear, especially given the warm weather on this day.

Before we continue on any further, I must say that the only non-Angels game event that I had attended at the Big A before this Banana Ball experience was a high school baseball game between my alma mater Fountain Valley Barons and the Los Alamitos Griffins during my junior year in April 2017 during Spring Break. The Barons won the game on a walk-off walk I think and we were sitting in the “Diamond Club” seats usually reserved for those who pay top dollar for a behind-the-plate view of Angels games. So, this Banana Ball game was definitely going to be more packed and exciting than a high school baseball game.

The pregame hype was on as highlights of the Bananas recent weekend set in Kansas City, Mo. at Kauffman Stadium were shown. The Bananas played against the team they were facing tonight in the Firefighters and they won both times against them in the Heartland. Now they were looking to beat the Firefighters at the Big A while also putting on a show with them. The show had already begun as there were pregame events such as dancing, picking a fan to be the designated challenger in this game(an extra rule that was added onto the original ten rules of Banana Ball is that a fan can challenge one call per game made by the umpires on the field), and other pregame announcements made by the Bananas’ Young Professor hype man Matt Graifer, who gave everyone in attendance a rundown of the rules of Banana Ball. There was also a banana-throwing contest between player reps from both teams, in which the players were throwing bananas from the upper deck down onto the field, where there would be two guys wearing pajama pants who attempted to catch the bananas in their pants. This was crazy, as I bore witness to this while Dad went to buy food for us. Bill Leroy, the star Bananas catcher, was on the right field deck battling the glare from the setting sun while some player on the Firefighters with the name of Marshall Shill(perfect name for a guy on that team) was starting his route from the left field lower upper deck, literally standing in Section 401 next to the section where our seats were. The banana-pants contest was fun to see and I shot a whole video of it. As we got closer to game time, we got to meet more of the Bananas cast, featuring the dad-bod dance squad called the Man-Nanas(who were hilarious in showing off their curves), a lady dressed up in a large yellow dress with a big skirt called Princess Potassia(a fitting name for the potassium that makes up the nutrients in actual bananas) and the dancing guy with double zeroes on his jersey in Maceo, who definitely has the moves to do banana splits whenever he feels like it. And finally, we got to see Jesse Cole enter the playing surface to do a pregame routine with Split the mascot regarding a little kid taking a bite out of an actual banana. If the kid thought that the banana tasted good, we were in for a good night. If the kid doesn’t like the taste of the banana(that kind of defeats the purpose for the segment), then this was going to be a disaster of a night. The little girl(there were plenty of them on the field on this night) took a bite of the banana and she said that the banana was good. Everyone was happy to hear that. This experience was definitely going to be a thrill now.

After the team intros, we had a good time seeing the rest of the pregame hype as the special characters that are a part of the Banana Ball cast came to be introduced at home plate. Other notable players on the Bananas are the singing Dalton Mauldin, the talented-fielding Jackson Olson, the cape-wearing outfielder Reese Alexiades and a local from the Inland Empire RobertAnthony Cruz. Jesse Cole then did his traditional crowd-leading “Start The Clock” announcement and the two-hour clock displayed on the scoreboard at the right field pavilion and elsewhere throughout the stadium started. The game was filled with plenty of trick plays from the Bananas and only a couple from the Firefighters. The Bananas won a couple of innings early, while the Firefighters managed to score a couple points to make it somewhat competitive. The Firefighters did some hilarious gaffes like having their smallest player come up to bat while hanging from a ladder and then using that same ladder to celebrate scoring a run in the middle of the game by having one of their players climb up it to touch the left field foul pole. The Bananas owned the night though, with backflipping catches, between the legs throws and superb hitting. Entertainment in-between innings was fun as well, as the crowd engaged in a sing-off of a few notable songs between the first base/right field and third base/left field lines. Jesse was on the other side from us and his side ended up winning, which the third base side jeered their disapproval to. Not much booing at Bananas games unless you’re not a part of the winning side of a sing-off or a contestant is chosen by the emcee as the winner when someone else clearly got the loudest cheers. The fans can only dictate so much, right? But it was all fun and games, literally.

Other events that I forgot to mention in the pregame window were both teams competing in a water-balloon tossing and hitting contest, which the Firefighters won ironically, and Princess Potassia having three little girls show off their dance moves with a few of the Bananas players. There was also a Man-Nanas Musical Chairs contest, a kiss-off between three couples and a game of walking the plank around the base paths where a few young dudes were holding pies while having to avoid being hit by water balloons thrown by the players. One last event that I would like to mention right now is the entire team praising a baby dressed in a Banana suit as the “Banana Baby” of the night. Neither me nor dad got out of our seats to go to the restroom for the entire length of the game, which was less than two hours by the way. I was slightly distracting myself in the pregame window of watching some of the Angels game that night in Cleveland, where they were facing the Guardians team that they can never seem to win a series against on the road(or ever). Thankfully, the Angels won that series-opening game 4-1 over Cleveland. My focus was solely on the show occurring right in front of my eyes. I took a lot of photos and shot a lot of videos of the events that occurred in the pregame window. I had to charge my phone during the game, so I didn’t take as many photos during the action. One of the things that I did use my phone for was the 8th-inning stretch(they don’t do Take Me Out To The Ballgame in Bananaland) when the Coldplay song “Yellow” was played and the stadium lights turned off as everyone who wanted to participate turned on the flashlight feature on their smartphones while singing out the lyrics to the song. That was definitely a cool moment.

Other cool moments that occurred were when Dakota “Stilts” Albritton came into the game to pitch(he hit on the very next night). The World’s Tallest Pitcher had a solid outing, or maybe he didn’t. What matters is the effort that goes into walking on those tall things from the dugout to the mound and standing on the mound to deliver pitches from like 15 or 20 feet up in the air(it could probably be only ten, but Dakota stands pretty tall on those things). The other cool moment that occurred during that Friday night game is that an Angels legend came up to bat. It was Troy Glaus, who was the MVP of the 2002 World Series that the Anaheim Angels won against the San Francisco Giants in seven games. Glaus delivered so many clutch hits during that entire postseason run, without him the Halos would still be without a world title. He is also the all-time leader for home runs in a single season in Angels baseball history with 47 home runs hit during the 2000 season when I was just an infant born straight out of my mother’s womb. T-Roy still holds the record after all these years in spite of countless attempts by superstars such as Mike Trout, Shohei Ohtani and others to break it. Maybe that record will fall someday, or maybe it won’t. When Glaus came up to bat, I was totally pumped. It was my first time seeing him bat in-person. At 48 years young, Glaus could still see the ball well and he hit a single against a Firefighters pitcher to set up a rally in the bottom of the 7th inning that helped the Bananas win the inning and get their fourth(or fifth) point of the game. That was something that I’ll never forget from this awesome experience.

In the end, the final inning happened and the Firefighters were down 5-1, needing to score four runs that would count as points in order to force the Bananas to come up in the bottom of the ninth. The Firefighters only scored one point and the Bananas won the game 5-2. There were no home runs, although one guy on the Bananas with the most home runs in Bananaland history so far came close I think. Eric Jones Jr is the name of the slugger, but I think it might have been a Firefighters hitter that had the ball go off the left-center field wall. Tough luck that none of them could aim towards the bullseye at the right field pavilion, then again, I’m probably glad that didn’t happen. After the game ended, we left our seats and had to deal with a humongous load of fans leaving the stadium at the same time. Walking down the ramps to the ground level, it was amazing that barely anyone left before the game ended. That’s never the case for an Angels home game, most people just don’t have a good reason to stay all the way through. They claim that they want to “beat the traffic”, even though they’re the ones creating it. Just doesn’t make sense, like a lot of things in a human-run world. But one thing that does is tailoring baseball to an entertainment lens. That makes a lot of sense, and Jesse Cole is a genius for doing what he’s been doing with the Savannah Bananas. Banana Ball is so large that there are now games of Banana Ball occurring where the Bananas themselves aren’t playing in. While this two-game set at the Big A was occurring, the Bananas’ mortal rival in the Party Animals were playing in Reno, Nevada against the newest team in Bananaland called the Texas Tailgaters. A hilarious name to say the least. So, Banana Ball will only continue to grow as long as there is an audience in the local area that wants to see it. And there are a load of fans just waiting to get their chance to see the most entertaining and zany baseball team on the face of the Earth play live in-person.

For those who don’t have luck in the ticket lottery, viewing them on TV and streaming platforms is easy. Banana Ball games are streaming on the team’s YouTube channel and also on ESPN+ and Disney+. And ESPN themselves are going to be showing a lot of Bananas games on their own personal channels in the coming years. After deciding not to renew their contract with MLB to broadcast ordinary professional games, the leading network in sports content is going to have a special place for the Savannah Bananas on their cable channels and streaming platforms starting next year. This investment is definitely a wise one by ESPN, which looks to continue to hold a large audience in spite of cord-cutting and ratings declines among their other sports broadcasts and shows. Hopefully the gamble on Banana Ball works out fine for them. Speaking of which, I watched the second Banana Ball game at the Big A on TV.

That second game featured appearances on “Disney Night” from Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Goofy(who threw out the first pitch), and other Disneyland characters such as a guy who is the longest tenured worker at the Happiest Place on Earth as a 92-year old who was employed by Disney Parks when Walt Disney himself was still alive. Jesse Cole takes much of his motivation for what he does with the Bananas from Walt’s magical kingdom built on classic cartoon characters and the movies that they are famous for being in and he definitely felt the magic when he and the team went to Disneyland on the Wednesday before the games at Angel Stadium occurred. The Bananas players got to enjoy a lot of the rides and attractions at Disneyland and California Adventure, with them dancing in front of the Enchanted Castle and having a fun time there. Other than the classic Disney characters on Saturday night, there was a special someone who was famous for saying a phrase which is still said throughout baseball culture today. The guy who was famous for playing a major character in Disney’s “The Sandlot” and exclaiming out “You’re killing me Smalls!” to the main character in the movie came up to bat. The Great Hambino himself in Ham Porter(real name Patrick Renna) came up to bat wearing a Bananas jersey specifically tailored to his liking and body size and he was mic’d up so that everyone could hear his reactions to each pitch. Ham made a good swing, but it was a generous pop out to shallow right field. Besides that hilarious moment, the Firefighters players did a choreographed performance of the famous song from another Disney classic in more modern times in “Mulan”, with the song “I’ll Make A Man Out of You” being performed and led by the guy who was coming up to bat. The very first pitch that the guy saw, he hit out for a home run. An incredible moment there for the Firefighters, who showed a bit more of heart on Saturday night. Another hilarious moment that occurred was that Bananas pitcher Kyle Luigs, before coming out to pitch, ended up going onto the top rock on the waterfall in center field at the Big A and he was dressed up as an actual angel. Kyle had the white robes and the glittering halo on his head, with him spreading his “wings” in being an angel in the outfield(a mention to another Disney classic movie that was actually shot at the stadium back when it looked completely different in the 90s). Later, Luigs came onto the mound to pitch in his Banana gear with a yellow Stetson on his head and he threw a couple pitches from second base(no rules in Banana Ball against that).

Lastly, another Angels legend came to pitch and it was John Lackey, who started that fateful Game 7 in the 2002 World Series. Lackey has three World Series rings with three different franchises(Angels, Red Sox and Cubs) and he made his first appearance on a big league mound since retiring after the 2017 season. John had some troubles though in giving up a couple runs to the Firefighters and that wasn’t all his fault(a failed trick play by the Bananas didn’t help matters). At 46 years old, Lackey didn’t have as good of an arm as he did in his glory days, but he still was able to record three outs. All the other shenanigans occurred on the field and the Bananas held off a late rally by the Firefighters(who had another one of their players hit a home run in the 9th inning) to win 5-3 to secure the series win in Anaheim. It was incredible seeing both games occur, one in-person and one on a televised/streamed broadcast. Biko Skalla definitely provided some flair on Saturday night and made me feel alright about seeing the Bananas. Fun fact, the ticket prices on the resale market for the Bananas games at the Big A had the cheapest tickets available be more expensive than the cheapest price for a game up the road between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees at Dodger Stadium, where the Bananas aren’t scheduled to play this year but they could definitely go there eventually.

Overall, it was a fun time seeing the Savannah Bananas play a live game of Banana Ball. Seeing all the antics and other things that occurred definitely made for a fun and entertaining experience. And that’s the bottom line. MLB should potentially take some ideas from the Bananas to make games more fun. Obviously, it’s up to each team to decide how they engage their fans during a game(and the Angels communications department has improved the in-game aesthetics in recent years, but at a great personal cost that I don’t want to harken on) and keep people in their seats. But eventually the product matters more than the game itself and there are too many people who see baseball as boring and slow-paced(even with all the rules changes that Rob Manfred has instituted in order to improve the flow of major league games). In the end, you need a fixed timeline to entertain the fans and give them a reason to stay at the ballpark as long as they possibly can. The Bananas nail the pin on the horse on so many different levels. Involve the fans in the game in terms of catching a foul ball and it counting as an out? A radical idea but one that gives folks a reason to keep their eye on the action. In-game entertainment such as sing-offs and Man-Nana Musical Chairs to keep the crowd engaged? A great strategy. Appearances by notable baseball “celebrities” in the local area and notable characters on your team such as a player who pitches and hits on stilts, another that runs with a spaceman helmet on and a dancing coach off to the side? A wonderful idea to keep the fans excited and guessing who could make a surprise appearance. And finally, having a tied game after nine innings end with only four players on the field, no free runner at second base and with an inside-the-park HR to determine the winner? Pure gold. The golden batter rule is also an interesting one as well, so interesting in fact that Manfred actually suggested potentially implementing it into major league games, very much to the ire of traditionalist fans who seem to become more rare by the day in baseball. The Savannah Bananas are on the right track and if they’re selling out stadiums that are tens of thousands of seats larger than their home ballpark in their southeast coast town, then something good is happening. I saw living proof of that at the end of May when the Big A was sold out for a couple of fun nights seeing the most entertaining show in baseball(and maybe even all of sports).