My First Savannah Bananas Game: Baseball, Barnum and the Greatest Show I Didn’t Know I Was Missing
- Mark Rosenman
- 2 hours ago
- 10 min read
At Gillette Stadium, Jesse Cole proved that sometimes the best way to save baseball is to stop worrying so much about baseball
I have been going to baseball games for a very long time.
Long enough to remember when going to the ballpark meant keeping score with a pencil, arguing about whether the manager should have left the starter in, complaining about the price of a hot dog and wondering why the team couldn't simply bunt more.
I have seen good baseball games, bad baseball games, historic baseball games and games that were so boring that the most memorable moment was the seventh-inning stretch.
But until recently, I had never seen a Savannah Bananas game.
That changed when I walked into Gillette Stadium for my first Banana Ball experience.
And somewhere between bananas flying through the upper deck, players dancing in the aisles and Jesse Cole conducting a stadium-wide sing-along in a yellow tuxedo, I realized something:
This wasn't just a baseball game.
It was an experience.
And perhaps the most remarkable part was that it never felt like an experience being imposed upon 65,000 people.
It felt like 65,000 people were part of it.
That distinction is everything.
There was an appropriate bit of foreshadowing on the drive to Foxborough.
On the way to Gillette Stadium, I passed the Barnum Museum in Bridgeport.
I couldn't help but smile.
Because if P.T. Barnum was the great showman of another era, Jesse Cole may very well be his 21st-century baseball equivalent.
Barnum understood something that Cole clearly understands: people don't just want to be entertained. They want to feel something.
They want to laugh.
They want to participate.
They want to tell somebody about what they saw when they get home.
And, most importantly, they want to feel that they were part of something.
The Barnum Museum describes P.T. Barnum as an entrepreneur and entertainer who understood the power of spectacle and promotion.
One of the lines attributed to Barnum has always stuck with me:
"The noblest art is that of making others happy."
And another comes from Barnum's "The Art of Money Getting":
"Whatever you do, do it with all your might."
After spending an evening with the Savannah Bananas, I couldn't help but think Jesse Cole had checked both boxes.
For anyone who has somehow avoided the phenomenon, the Savannah Bananas didn't begin as the wildly successful baseball entertainment organization they are today.
They arrived in Savannah in October 2015 as a summer collegiate baseball team with a fairly simple mission: make baseball fun and bring fans back to Historic Grayson Stadium.
There was just one problem.
Savannah had recently lost its minor-league baseball team the Savannah Sand Gnats after 90 years, and convincing fans to embrace a collegiate summer team was proving to be much harder than Jesse and Emily Cole had anticipated.
The early numbers were not encouraging. According to the Bananas' own history, they sold only a handful of tickets during their first few months. By January 2016, just months before their first game, the organization had overdrawn its bank account.
The Coles were so committed to keeping the dream alive that they sold their home to keep the team going.
Then, on February 25, 2016, came the announcement that would change everything.
The name was going to be the Savannah Bananas.
It was not exactly met with universal acclaim.
Quite the opposite.
The organization says the name was disliked by many people in Savannah, with critics questioning the owner's sanity and predicting that the team would never sell a ticket.
But the name did something important.
It got people's attention.
The announcement generated local and national media coverage, including CBS, NBC and Sports Illustrated, and was even recognized by ESPN's SportsCenter as "Logo of the Year."
Then came Opening Night.
The Bananas sold it out.
And the organization has says it has sold out every game since.
What started as an unconventional summer collegiate baseball team had begun to develop into something nobody had quite seen before.
The Bananas spent seven seasons in the Coastal Plain League, winning three Petitt Cup championships and having more than 35 players drafted.
But Jesse Cole wasn't finished reimagining baseball.
In 2022, the Bananas announced they were leaving the Coastal Plain League and would play Banana Ball year-round.
That was the moment the experiment became a movement.
The Bananas weren't simply going to try to make traditional baseball more entertaining.
They were going to build an entirely different experience around the game.
That decision changed everything.
Banana Ball Isn't Baseball With a Banana Costume
This is probably the biggest misconception.
Yes, there are players in ridiculous outfits.
Yes, there are competitions involving oversized pants.
But underneath all of that is legitimate baseball.
And that became increasingly obvious as the game went along.
There were no radar guns flashing numbers for me to obsess over, but you didn't need one.
Some of those pitchers could throw.
They were bringing serious velocity.
The hitters weren't pretending to hit.
They were driving baseballs.
And the fielders weren't merely baseball players who had been recruited because they could dance.
Some of the defensive plays were spectacular.
Banana Ball actually rewards certain trick plays, and watching some of the infielders execute them made me think that Ozzie Smith would have appreciated what he was seeing.
That is what makes the Bananas different from something like the Harlem Globetrotters.
The Globetrotters are obviously spectacular athletes, but the competition is part of the illusion.
With Banana Ball, the entertainment is wrapped around real competitive baseball.
The players are athletes first.
Entertainers second.
And somehow they have figured out how to make both jobs equally important.
This may have been the biggest surprise of the night.
Gillette Stadium can hold roughly 65,000 people.
That is a lot of people.
Normally, when you're sitting in a stadium that size, there is a certain psychological distance between the field and the people in the upper reaches.
The action is down there.
You're up here.
You're watching.
At a Bananas game, that barrier essentially disappears.
And it doesn't happen by accident.
Before the game even gets rolling, Bananas and Loco Beach Coconuts players were moving through the upper decks.
Not standing on the field waving.
Not appearing on the Jumbotron for 15 seconds.
They were actually in the sections.
They moved from one part of the stadium to another and got fans involved in the Banana in the Pants competition.
The premise sounds like something a group of eight-year-olds would invent after eating too much Halloween candy.
A player in the upper reaches of the stadium throws a banana toward the field.
Waiting below is a teammate wearing enormous pants.
His job is to run underneath it, open those pants and catch the banana.
And the stadium goes crazy.
Think about that for a second.
The Bananas figured out how to take the nosebleed sections of a 65,000-seat stadium and turn them into the front row of the show.
That's brilliant.
Then there were the sing-offs.
At various points, players — and Jesse Cole himself — were back in the upper deck, working the crowd.
One side of the stadium would sing.
Then the other.
Louder.
Then louder still.
And suddenly Gillette Stadium wasn't 65,000 individual spectators.
It was two enormous groups competing with one another.
The team wasn't asking people to sit down and watch.
It was giving them a reason to stand up and participate.
That is the Bananas' secret sauce.
Fan engagement isn't something they sprinkle on top of the game.
Fan engagement is the game.
The organization's philosophy is built around putting fans first, and the company's own materials repeatedly emphasize being caring, different, enthusiastic and fun.
After watching it firsthand, I understand why.
The Baby Race
Then came the baby race.
Several babies were lined up on the field.
The goal?
Get from Point A to Point B.
That's it.
No complicated rules.
No analytics.
No scouting report.
No pitch clock.
Just babies crawling across a baseball field.
And 65,000 people screaming at them like they were racing in the Kentucky Derby.
The babies, of course, had absolutely no idea why 65,000 people were yelling.
Some crawled.
Some stopped.
Some appeared to question the entire concept.
And the crowd loved every second of it.
It was one of those moments when you realize that the Bananas aren't really selling baseball.
They're selling memories.
And Then There Were the Lobsters
The lobster roll might have been my favorite.
Two contestants dressed as lobsters had to climb onto a shirtless teammate covered in butter and then roll themselves toward the finish line.
I have covered enough baseball to know that sentence should never appear in a game story.
But that's Banana Ball.
And somehow it works.
The contests aren't simply random pieces of weirdness.
They're short.
They're visual.
They're funny.
And, most importantly, they get the crowd involved.
Nobody is sitting there wondering when the next commercial break is coming.
There is always something happening.
Broadway Comes to the Ballpark
And then there are the players themselves.
The choreography is not some half-hearted attempt at dancing.
These guys can actually dance.
The musical numbers are rehearsed.
The timing is sharp.
The players know where they're supposed to be, when they're supposed to move and exactly what the crowd is expecting.
It is part baseball game, part Broadway production.
And the remarkable thing is that the players seem to genuinely enjoy doing it.
That matters.
You can tell when entertainment is being performed because somebody's job description says "entertain."
This doesn't feel like that.
It feels like the players have bought into the idea.
Jesse Cole: The Man in the Yellow Tux
Of course, none of this would exist without Jesse Cole.
And if you're looking for Jesse Cole at a Bananas game, you don't exactly need binoculars.
He's the guy in the yellow tuxedo.
Cole has made that tuxedo part of the brand, but it is more than a costume. It represents the philosophy behind the entire organization: if everybody else is going to look and act like a traditional sports organization, the Bananas are going to do the opposite.
The team's own history notes that Cole wears the yellow tuxedo essentially everywhere and has built an organization around doing things differently.
His story is especially interesting because he wasn't handed a successful sports empire.
He and Emily Cole took an enormous financial gamble on an idea that plenty of people thought was crazy.
They nearly lost everything.
Instead of retreating toward conventional baseball, they leaned further into the unconventional.
That's the part I find most fascinating.
Most businesses respond to failure by becoming more conservative.
Cole responded by asking:
What if we went even further?
The Bananas became more outrageous.
More entertaining.
More fan-focused.
More willing to take risks.
And eventually, what looked crazy began to look brilliant.
Fans First Isn't Just a Slogan
The Bananas describe themselves as a "Fans First" organization.
You can buy the book.
You can read the philosophy.
You can watch the videos.
But none of that really matters until you see it.
At Gillette Stadium, I saw it.
The players went into the stands.
Jesse Cole went into the stands.
Fans weren't treated as spectators.
They were treated as participants.
Kids got opportunities to interact with players.
Young fans could take the mound, try to pick off a favorite Banana, play catch, get an autograph or take a picture.
There was pregame access.
There were postgame celebrations.
There were activities happening before, during and after the actual baseball.
The game was simply the centerpiece of a much larger experience.
And that may be the most important lesson of the entire Banana Ball phenomenon.
They understand that people don't remember the ticket they bought. They remember how the night made them feel.
It Reminded Me of the Circus
That brings me back to Barnum.
As a kid, there was something magical about hearing that the circus was coming to town.
You knew something unusual was about to happen.
You knew there would be things you couldn't see anywhere else.
You knew the entire experience was designed to make you forget about ordinary life for a few hours.
That's what the Bananas have recreated.
Not the circus itself.
The feeling of the circus.
The anticipation.
The spectacle.
The absurdity.
The sense that you are about to see something you won't be able to explain to someone who wasn't there.
Except the Bananas have done it with baseball.
And unlike a circus, the athletic competition underneath the spectacle is real.
The Genius of Making Everybody Feel Like They're in the Club
There are plenty of sports organizations that are very good at entertaining fans.
There are teams with fireworks.
Teams with mascots.
Teams with promotions.
Teams with concerts.
Teams with giant video boards.
But the Bananas have taken fan participation to another level.
They make the fan sitting in Row 2 and the fan sitting in the highest seat in the stadium feel equally important.
That is incredibly difficult to do.
Especially in a stadium with 65,000 people.
Yet somehow, during the course of the evening, I never felt like the people in the upper deck were watching a show happening somewhere else.
They were part of the show.
And that's the genius.
Baseball Purists, Don't Be Afraid
I'll admit it.
I'm a baseball guy.
I like strategy.
I like statistics.
I like pitching matchups.
I like arguing about whether a player should hit second or sixth.
I like watching a shortstop turn a double play.
So I went into my first Bananas game wondering whether I would find the whole thing entertaining but ultimately dismiss it as baseball theater.
I was wrong.
The baseball is good.
Really good.
The players can play.
The pitchers can pitch.
The hitters can hit.
The defenders can make plays.
And when you strip away the costumes, music and craziness, there are legitimate athletes competing.
The Bananas simply understand that a baseball game doesn't have to be three hours of waiting for something to happen.
They have removed the dead space.
They have turned the entire evening into something worth watching.
The Barnum Test
On the drive home, I kept thinking about that Barnum Museum sign.
It was almost too perfect.
I had literally passed a museum celebrating one of America's greatest showmen on my way to see a man who may be building the modern sports equivalent.
P.T. Barnum understood spectacle.
He understood promotion.
He understood curiosity.
But more than anything, he understood people.
Jesse Cole seems to understand the same thing.
The Savannah Bananas aren't successful because they have discovered some secret way to play baseball.
They are successful because they discovered something much more fundamental:
People want to have fun.
Parents want to watch their kids laugh.
Kids want to feel like they are part of something.
Adults want to feel like kids again.
And sports fans want to see athletes who are actually good at what they do.
The Bananas give everybody a little bit of all of it.
Did I Go Bananas?
So, after my first Savannah Bananas game, would I go back?
Absolutely.
Would I recommend it to somebody who doesn't care about baseball?
Absolutely.
Would I recommend it to a baseball purist?
Especially.
Because you may walk into a Banana Ball game expecting a gimmick.
What you discover is a baseball team that happens to understand entertainment better than almost anybody in professional sports.
And somewhere in the middle of all of it, there was a baseball game being played by athletes who could really play.
That's a pretty remarkable combination.
And maybe that is the ultimate lesson of Jesse Cole and the Savannah Bananas.
They didn't abandon baseball.
They reimagined what going to a baseball game could be.
Barnum once said that the noblest art was making other people happy.
After spending an evening with the Bananas, I think Jesse Cole would probably agree.
And after watching 65,000 people laugh, sing, scream, cheer and become part of the show, I have to admit something I never expected to say:
For one night at Gillette Stadium, I wasn't just watching baseball.
I was a kid again, waiting for the circus to come to town.
And the circus had a banana for a mascot.
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