Peeling the mystery of the Savannah Bananas and their massive following

NASHVILLE — It can safely be said that Jesse Cole is doing something right.

But what?

The Savannah Bananas, a touring collection of dancing, singing, acrobatic performers with just enough baseball skill to turn the sport upside down, is riding an unfathomable wave of popularity. Cole, the owner of this one-of-a-kind franchise, is the mastermind behind it all. But what is the secret sauce? What about this traveling baseball circus act drew such a massive crowd — conservatively, 60,000-plus packed Nissan Stadium, home of the NFL’s Tennessee Titans — for Saturday’s “game” against the Bananas’ accompanying foil, the Party Animals?

I sought to solve this question from the top of Nissan’s east upper deck — row KK, I can attest, has nothing behind it but a bird’s eye view of the Nashville skyline — and after three hours, I came down with all the answers.

Well, some answers.

I attended with a wife who sat on a waiting list for tickets for the better part of three years and finally landed them, conveniently enough for me, on Mother’s Day weekend, a daughter who knows Bananas second baseman Dalton Mauldin personally, and a son who will try anything once. Hence, I climbed the upper deck knowing the family would have a good time regardless of what I thought.

Know this before entering the Bananas’ ticket lottery (yes, it’s a lottery just to reach the ticket window): Banana Ball is not baseball. It’s not close, nor does it try to be. There’s pitching and hitting and fielding and throwing, but virtually nothing else about it sticks to the traditional game. One must completely suspend any expectation of seeing the sport treated with the reverence it deserves, which naturally leads to baseball purists deriding the entire spectacle. I’m a baseball purist, but my son’s willingness to try anything once comes from me, so I tried my best to roll with it.

Cole has been known to bristle at the suggestion that the Bananas are baseball’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters, but the comparison is a pretty fair one.

Outfielders catch fly balls in the middle of a backflip, or volley them to a teammate, who might catch the relay behind the back. Infielders perform all manner of fancy trickery with fielded groundballs. Pitchers simply pump strikes at a blistering pace to keep the show moving under a prescribed two-hour time limit, including Dakota “Stilts” Albritton, who can fire strikes while standing on stilts that require the longest-legged pair of baseball pants in history. Even the umpires get into the performance act. The music never stops, even during play.

An assortment of special Bananas rules make the experience even more absurd, until you accept that absurdity is very much the point. If a fan catches a foul ball, the batter is out. On a walk, the batter can choose to sprint and go for extra bases, and can’t be tagged out until every defensive player has touched the ball. The Bananas might ought to retool this “rule”, because on every walk Saturday night, the batter merely took a wide turn at first base, and watched the outfield sprint to second base to shorten the necessary throws for a tagout.

More than an hour before the game, the Bananas hold their “Before the Peel” show. On the field, players like Alex Ziegler captivate a piece of the crowd by balancing a baseball bat vertically on his nose, including a massive, 30-pound bat clearly made just to test Ziegler’s limits. Another piece of the crowd might be drawn to the Banana Nanas, a uniformed group of six dancing elderly women; another to the antics of the Bananas mascot, Split, and still another to the U.S. Army Golden Knights parachute team landing in the infield, trailed by banana-yellow smoke. Throw in the Titans’ recently-selected draft class, including the No. 1 overall draft pick, Cam Ward, helping with pre-game player introductions, and there was something for just about everyone. As for sightlines, when an NFL stadium surrounds a baseball diamond, a lot of seats aren’t very good for a clear look at the show. But the operators of Nissan’s two massive video boards rotated through closeups of all the happenings to bring the action closer to Bananas fans who clearly didn’t care where they had to sit.

Outside the stadium, there was a brass band, suited up in full banana costumes, holding the attention of music lovers. Food and beverage kiosks everywhere, holding the attention of food and beverage kiosk lovers. And dozens of merchandise tents, at which merchandise lovers forked over more cash than you can point a banana at. Jerseys, hats, T-shirts and tank-tops. Balls and gloves and keychains and sweatshirts. Bananas fans rock the gear, and they don’t care what you think of it. The online merch site has a more diverse collection of items for sale than a legit pro sports team. If you walked the concourse with no Bananas apparel at all, as I did, you were in the clear minority.

Oh yeah … the “game”.

The Bananas lost! The heroes dropped a quirkily-scored 4-3 decision to the Party Animals, which might be Cole’s best case for separation between his production and the Globetrotters, who virtually never lost to their usual opposing stooges, the Washington Generals.

So what is the magic pulling these crowds?

Whether it’s a band or a sports team or a county fair, you’re doing something right if your crowds multiply by a factor of 10 in just two years. That’s what the Bananas just accomplished in Nashville, having played in front of about 7,000 fans just two years ago at First Horizon Park, to now packing Nissan Stadium with nearly 10 times that number.

A key factor, to be sure, is that they’ve struck the delicate balance between family fun and alcohol sales that can be tricky to dial in. The Bananas appeal to kids, of course, first and foremost. There were legions of families in attendance with kids who stayed on the edges of seats for the whole affair. But the alcohol FLOWED. Full-bar setups throughout the stadium kept beers in an awful lot of fists. There was Tito’s in the lemonade. Jack in the Cokes. I’m sure somewhere in the stadium, a too-drunk adult spoiled a good time for someone else’s kid, but I didn’t witness anything close to that. Not sure I even heard a curse word. Maybe the absence of a legit sporting event, which can bring out the worst in drunken fools, helped keep it tame. Maybe it was because everyone was there for the Bananas; no fans of a visiting team to taunt or fight with. Whatever the case, adults adulted and kids kidded in harmony.

The mystery I’ll never figure out, however, is how the Bananas are pulling repeat customers. You don’t draw crowds this size unless you’re attracting a lot of the same people again and again. Some, no doubt, follow the tour wherever it goes. And it definitely felt like the kind of show one only needs to experience once.

Me, I’m a one-timer. The family had fun, so I can’t say I regret it, and nobody can say I didn’t give it a chance.

Been there. Done that. Didn’t get the T-shirt.

Tuscaloosa News columnist Chase Goodbread is also the weekly co-host of Crimson Cover TV on WVUA-23. Reach him at [email protected]. Follow on X.com @chasegoodbread.