<p>-
- Why the Savannah Bananas — not the Dallas Cowboys — are America's Team</p>
<p>Jay BusbeeJuly 3, 2025 at 6:54 PM</p>
<p>SAVANNAH, Ga. — It's hours before first pitch at historic Grayson Stadium, and a swirl of strange and disconnected activity covers the field. Down the right-field line, two ballplayers in banana-yellow jerseys are getting loose, firing easy warmup tosses at one another with more velocity than you've ever thrown anything in your life. At the netting behind home plate, a young girl holds up a sign proclaiming in multicolored lettering that she's here to celebrate her "9th b-day." Overhead, speakers play a rotating sequence of singalong songs — "Shout," "YMCA," "Don't Stop Believin'." So far, a normal enough scene at a lazy-summer minor-league ballpark.</p>
<p>But look in another direction, and you'll see two players rehearsing a complicated handstand-into-a-faceplant onto air mattresses. Near the visiting dugout, two players are standing in front of an iPhone on a tripod, pressing play on a video and mimicking the dance moves onscreen, again and again. Out by home plate, a dozen players are following a choreographer's moves, kicking, dipping, twisting and spinning as the Black Eyed Peas' "Imma Be" plays overhead.</p>
<p>This is Bananaland, and strange as it seems, this is now the territory of conquerors.</p>
<p>You probably know the basics of the Savannah Bananas, the minor league team-turned-traveling extravaganza that combines baseball with theater, sport and performance art colliding in a frenetic, high-energy show. Built by owners Jesse and Emily Cole on the bones of a collegiate summer league, the Bananas play "Banana Ball," a version of baseball with its own set of rules — whoever scores the most runs in an inning gets a point, for instance, and if a fan catches a foul ball, the batter is out. The Bananas have starred in documentaries, sold out minor-league stadiums, even hosted an ocean cruise. And they've almost certainly turned up on your social media feed, players dancing to "The Greatest Showman" or "Thunderstruck" in between pitches.</p>
<p>We're for the fans, and fans come for an escape from everything. We don't have a political ideology. We don't have a religious ideology. We're just Bananas, you know. We're here to make people happy.Zack Frongillo</p>
<p>Somewhere along the line, though, the Bananas broke containment. They graduated from minor-league parks to major-league venues, selling out legendary ballparks like Fenway Park and Camden Yards. During a recent weekend in Los Angeles, Bananas tickets sold on the secondary market for more than tickets to an actual Dodgers-Yankees World Series rematch. And now, this cavalcade of dancing goofballs has leveled up again, selling out NFL stadiums. Banana Ball has invaded places like Tampa, Nashville and Charlotte, selling out all the way up to the upper-deck light fixtures.</p>
<p>It's fair to wonder how in the world the Bananas could draw tens of thousands of people to a football stadium to watch baseball … provided, that is, you've never seen the Bananas yourself in person. If your entire experience with the Bananas is a steady stream of goofy dances on your feed, it'd be easy to slag off the entire enterprise as silly and inconsequential — and, this being 2025, many social media cranks have done just that.</p>
<p>But look a little deeper. We're in an era where major sports franchises, in their perpetual quest to improve profitability and valuation, now treat their fans as either perpetual ATMs or irrelevant nuisances. It's damn near impossible to follow your favorite team on a daily basis without shelling out hundreds in streaming service subscription costs. Professional athletes are more walled-off than ever before from their fans, throwing crumbs of social-media postings while remaining resolutely distant. Arrogant, angry blather dominates sports media, the strongest remaining connection between teams and their fans. At every turn, teams, athletes and media all exploit fans' love and devotion for their own petty, selfish, short-sighted, profit-taking ends. It's never been more expensive to be a fan, and it's never been less fulfilling, either.</p>
<p>Is it any wonder, then, that a group of goofballs who are clearly enjoying themselves has found an unexpected connection with fans? Everyone else, it seems, has lost the plot on what sports ought to be, a diversion and an inspiration. By both happy accident and deliberate design, the Bananas have stepped into this void left behind by misguided major professional sports leagues … and they're TikTok-dancing all the way to the bank.</p>
<p>The Savannah Bananas do a line dance on the infield at Fenway Park. (Boston Globe via Getty Images)</p>
<p>This isn't a "hack journalist goes to small-town ballpark in search of a vanished America" story, but if it were, Grayson Stadium would be an ideal starting point. Nestled among long avenues of oaks draped with Spanish moss, the park has hosted everyone from Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth — who beat the Georgia Teachers College 15-1 here back in 1935 — to John Smoltz and Chipper Jones.</p>
<p>"Grayson's great, because this is our home," says Andy Archer, a surfer-turned-pitcher for the Bananas. (Every player here has a wild backstory.) "This is where we get recharged, this is where the game of Banana Ball was created, this is where the most intimate interactions with fans are, because this is our smallest venue."</p>
<p>That's a hell of a humblebrag, but it also happens to be true. About 5,000 fans will pack Grayson on this warm night in late June, chattering, stomping, eating and drinking their way through two hours of gameplay. Some of them will be dialed in to the game, some of them will be more focused on their nachos, but all of them are going to get an experience unlike anything else in sports right now.</p>
<p>I've come here to see if I can understand how the Bananas are building deep fan connections while other franchise fan connections are fraying, expanding their tent while other teams are plotting ever-more-complex ways to soak their existing customers. And it all starts with the free food.</p>
<p>We could raise prices, but … why? If we can build a sustainable company and take care of people, then that's enough for us.Bananas co-owner Emily Cole</p>
<p>Yes, free. Augusta National justifiably gets praise for its $1.50 pimento cheese sandwiches, and the Atlanta Falcons have a fan-friendly menu that lets you fill up on gameday essentials for about $10 a head. But the Bananas have them both beat; every ticket entitles you to as many Cokes, hot dogs, burgers, chicken sandwiches and cookies as you can cram down. (Ice cream, alcoholic beverages and other items actually do require payment, but a reasonable one.)</p>
<p>"We would rather people feel like they're getting just outrageous value, and tell others about that, than try to nickel-and-dime them in the short term, and they feel like, 'Ugh, I just don't know if I could do that ever again,'" team president Jared Orton says.</p>
<p>That little tweak — fold the food into the price of a $35 ticket — is part of what's making the Bananas so popular. Consciously or not, the Bananas have become a de facto antidote to so much of what modern American professional sports have become — money-focused, arrogant, distant, corporate. Sure, you may not be a big fan of a pitcher dancing to "Time of My Life" after a strikeout, but you've got to admit … it's a lot better than paying $18 for a beer after getting nailed for $40 in ticket service fees. (That $35 ticket is the total price, by the way. Fees included. You're welcome.)</p>
<p>The only appropriate way to celebrate a strikeout 🤩 pic.twitter.com/DLogAc8PG2</p>
<p>— Savannah Bananas (@TheSavBananas) April 5, 2023</p>
<p>Of course, the free food only goes so far. The Bananas have to deliver on the field as well, and that's where they've cracked the sports-entertainment code. The players on the Bananas — and their "rival" teams, the Party Animals, Tailgaters and Firefighters — are ballplayers first, entertainers second.</p>
<p>"What makes the game of Banana Ball pretty strong is that it's rooted in baseball players," says Danny Hosley, a former college ballplayer who left a masters program to suit up for the Bananas. "If you just got a bunch of entertainers to come out here and jazz everybody with all this stuff, to a baseball fan, it would just [be], 'I don't want to watch that, it's not real baseball.'"</p>
<p>You can't fake a fastball. And you can't script a home run. The run-of-show bits — and there are so, so many, throughout the entire two-hour game — don't get off the ground if the players fail to commit and then don't execute.</p>
<p>"The game changes a little bit, but ultimately there's a guy on the mound trying to get you out, and you're trying to take the guy deep," says Jake Skole, one of the black-and-pink-suited Party Animals. "There's still the competitiveness there, which is cool, and at my age (33), we get to put on a uniform and compete every day. … It's the best part."</p>
<p>Skole is perhaps the best example of what the Bananas offer to potential players. He's a former first-round draft pick of the Texas Rangers — he was picked a few spots after Bryce Harper and Manny Machado — who later played college football in the late 2010s at Georgia. (He was part of the team that was on the wrong end of Alabama's 2nd-and-26 national title.) He jumped at the chance to join the Bananas family, even though he admits to some trepidation early on.</p>
<p>"When I first showed up and we were walking into rehearsals, I'm like, 'Rehearsals?' I'm still not the best dancer on the team, but I'm more open to getting goofy and doing things," he says. "You have to lose a bit of your seriousness when it comes to some preparation, understanding that in one of your four at-bats, there might be a ball on fire coming your way."</p>
<p>The Savannah Bananas greet fans under the grandstands of Fenway Park before the game. (Boston Globe via Getty Images)</p>
<p>That hypothetical "ball on fire" is the second element of the Bananas' talent + entertainment equation, and it's a key reason why the Bananas have eclipsed the current statistically driven game in the key metric of "fun."</p>
<p>Pro baseball swung so deep into the realm of analytics — multiple pitching changes, interminable at-bats, fielding shifts — that the sport needed a fundamental come-to-Jesus moment to save baseball from itself.</p>
<p>The Bananas understand that baseball fans don't come to a game to watch dueling executions of probabilities. They come to the ballpark to see dingers and strikeouts, executed by players who look like they actually enjoy playing a kids' game for money.</p>
<p>"What makes a good Banana Ball player is, in a weird way, the ability to compartmentalize the entire experience," Orton says. "The ability to be great on the field, off the field, with fans, with kids, create content, be great on video, be willing to not take yourself too seriously but still take your craft very seriously in what you do. That's what it takes."</p>
<p>That balance — being serious about having fun — is at the heart of the Bananas experience. From the moment the ropes drop — and that literally happens, the team drops ropes to welcome in its first fans — you're in the center of nonstop spectacle, everything from a New Orleans-style second-line march to a receiving line of players for every fan entering the park to singalongs in the courtyard in front of the stadium … and that's all before the first pitch.</p>
<p>Once the game begins … strap in, friend, because you're in for a ride. The Bananas have stripped down every element of the current sporting experience to the studs and rebuilt it with a new emphasis on the fan. Games are 120 fully packed minutes, no more. Costs are up-front and obvious. Parking and concessions, at least at Grayson, are fixed, controlled and cheap-to-free. The players are fully committed at every moment, whether they're on the field or right there in the stands next to you. There aren't long, dull TV timeouts or interminable video reviews. There's no advertising on the walls at Grayson. The focus is entirely on the production in front of you — the production you've paid for once, so there's no need to keep squeezing you for more.</p>
<p>It's all literally like a live-action TikTok scroll. There's barely time to take in one moment before another bit of spectacle comes rushing in. For example: major-league ballplayers have one walkup song playing as they approach the plate. Bananas players will have three or four different songs playing while they're at bat. You get started singing along to one tune, bang, here comes another right after it. The entire experience is whiplash-quick and frantic, but then so's a roller coaster, and nobody boards one of those expecting a leisurely ride.</p>
<p>"We're taking inspiration from WWE, Cirque du Soleil, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok," says Bananas entertainment director Zack Frongillo. "We're being very intentional, watching what people are enjoying and figuring out how to take that and implement it onto a baseball field. … As long as we can move fast and jump on trends, it's super-easy for our creative muscles to work."</p>
<p>Our Dad Bod Cheerleading Squad is at it again... pic.twitter.com/Z9L8zTBJJc</p>
<p>— Savannah Bananas (@TheSavBananas) June 10, 2025</p>
<p>Tonight's of-the-moment celebrations include references to the Jell-O shot competition at the Men's College World Series and the notorious escaped Tennessee zebra. (A Party Animals player dressed as a zebra scampers across the infield between innings before being swept up in a net and carried back to the dugout.)</p>
<p>Throughout the entire chaotic endeavor, in-uniform players from both teams make their way up into the stands, shaking hands, signing autographs and posing for selfies as the game goes on behind them. There's a brief recognition of the military — players in the stands shake servicemembers' hands — but the Bananas' focus is decidedly apolitical.</p>
<p>"We're for the fans, and fans come for an escape from everything," Frongillo says. "We don't have a political ideology. We don't have a religious ideology. We're just Bananas, you know. We're here to make people happy."</p>
<p>It's OK to cast a cynical eye at that; in an era defined by for-us-or-against-us, we're all suspicious of anyone who proclaims to stand outside it all. But that's our fault, not the Bananas; there really was a time in this country where we didn't run every single public or social interaction through an is-it-OK-to-like-this? political lens. The Bananas are, in that sense, a throwback, and it's clear that fans are reacting positively.</p>
<p>"What we try to do is bring in people who every single person in the audience can look at and say, 'I aspire to be that person,'" Emily Cole says. "Maybe for the little girls, it's Princess Potassia [the princess of Bananaland], right? Maybe for a young middle or high schooler who plays the tuba, maybe they're watching the Bananas Pep Band. For dad, maybe he's watching the Mananas, the Dad Bod Cheer Squad, and he's like, 'Someday I'm going to be out there with them.' For grandma, maybe she's watching the Banana Nanas and saying, 'That's who I aspire to be.' … Regardless of your age or your background or your interests, there should be something at our shows that will make you excited and make you want to go meet that person."</p>
<p>That connectivity — the bond between performer and audience, between player and fan — is at the heart of the Bananas experience, a bond that simply can't exist on opposite sides of a phone screen, or at the end of an algorithm. Not only that, the players seem like they're having a heck of a lot of fun, too. They fist-bump fans upon arrival to the park, they pose for pics, they sign anything and everything put in front of them. In a world where so many Baby Kobes are trying so hard to look hard, that openness and willingness to engage on the fans' level, isn't just refreshing … it's necessary.</p>
<p>A sold out Bank of America Stadium sports a baseball diamond during the exhibition game between the Savannah Bananas and the Party Animals. Nearly 150,000 fans showed up for two games at the stadium where the Carolina Panthers play. (IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect / Reuters)</p>
<p>Which brings us around to those massive NFL stadiums. Pretty much the only element of the Bananas experience that's more difficult for the average fan than a "real" baseball game is the actual purchase of tickets. There's a waiting list and a lottery and a whole lot of hope and prayer involved … and for a team that prides itself on delivering a reliably enjoyable experience to its fans, that's a real chokepoint.</p>
<p>The departure from Savannah was a necessity for the Bananas to keep serving their legions of fans. Grayson only has a capacity of 5,000, and with a waiting list of 3 million, the math wasn't mathing. The calendar also works against the team; August in Savannah is not a delightful time. So on the road they went.</p>
<p>The Bananas began with trips to Mobile, Alabama, and then some spring training facilities. They scaled up to major-league stadiums, and now, as of 2025, they're scheduled to hit 17 major-league stadiums and four football stadiums, taking a crew of 220 on the road.</p>
<p>"The goal was never, 'We want to play in football stadiums,'" Emily Cole says. "What it comes down to for us, and what it will always start with is, 'What is fans first?' That is our guiding light, that is our northern star. That is how we try to answer every question or friction point that we have."</p>
<p>It's a rock-solid philosophy in theory, but how exactly do you put fans first when you're looking at a three- or four-tiered football stadium? Simple: You take the show to the fans, no matter where they are in the house. Cast members — Emily's term — will rotate in and out of the lineup and into the stands. Pitchers done with their stint on the mound will head into the crowd to present roses to girls, dance with kids, bro it up with the bros. All the while, there's still the game happening on the field.</p>
<p>"It can still be a highly competitive, highly talented game with the trick plays, the showmanship, the excitement," Orton says. "But also the person in Section 421 or whatever still gets a fantastic experience, still gets to see some of the characters face to face in their section, still gets to get a few autographs, still gets to sing and dance and laugh as much as the person sitting in Section 101 right behind home plate."</p>
<p>Every Bananas date through the end of August — when they'll visit the Pittsburgh Pirates' PNC Field — is sold out. The demand is there, so how much longer will the Bananas hold off the forces of capitalism? How much longer can this experiment in fan service continue? For heaven's sake, how much longer will they give away free food at Grayson?</p>
<p>"There are people every single day who reach out and say, 'You guys are crazy. Your tickets should be triple the price they are,'" Cole says, laughing. "When you have over 3 million people on a wait list, the demand is there, you could say. We could raise prices, but … why? If we can build a sustainable company and take care of people, then that's enough for us."</p>
<p>Still, the growth is coming. Starting next year, the Bananas will add two more teams, bringing the total to six … meaning there are enough teams to create a full-on Banana Ball League, with three games happening simultaneously in different cities around the country. Beyond that, the Bananas are looking to prepare the next generation with Banana Ball camps, plus there's the Banana Cruise, plus … who knows?</p>
<p>"I don't know where we're going to be in three years," Cole says, "because it probably hasn't even been thought of yet."</p>
<p>One element she promises won't become a part of the Bananas' future: external funding and all the strings attached thereto.</p>
<p>"Bringing in outside investment is just not on the horizon for us. It's not in the plans, and we don't want it to be," she says. "And if that means maybe not taking a certain step a certain year because you need more capital, then that's OK with us. We would rather grow more slowly and more intentionally than bringing in outside dollars, because at that point, we feel like we would be answering to somebody besides the fan. We'd be answering to the shareholder or to the investor."</p>
<p>Still, perhaps one day fans will decide they've seen enough of the Bananas' spectacle. Perhaps Jesse and Emily will sell to an owner who cuts a corner here and there. Perhaps the allure of private investment will become too strong to resist. Perhaps what makes the Bananas special will be sacrificed in favor of what makes the Bananas money.</p>
<p>And perhaps not. There's no law that says every American success story has to end by selling out the fan — it sure seems that way, yes, but there actually isn't a law — so maybe the Bananas are showing a new way for teams to connect with fans.</p>
<p>On this night, the Party Animals pretty thoroughly outplay the home team, but thanks to the rules of Banana Ball, the Bananas are still in this right to the end … when they lose 3-2. It's their fourth loss in five games, further proof that this isn't a pre-scripted show against a Harlem Globetrotters-style weak opponent.</p>
<p>The fans file out into the Savannah night, some clutching souvenir yellow Banana baseballs, some wearing brand-new Bananas merch, at least one still snacking on a garbage-can lid full of nachos. I get to my car and, despite the throngs of thousands filing out of the stadium into the narrow streets, I'm still on the open road barely a minute later. It's just one more fan-friendly magic trick in a night full of them.</p>
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<p>- Why the Savannah Bananas — not the Dallas Cowboys — are America's Team</p> <p>Jay BusbeeJ...
