Jesse Cole’s childhood dreams of playing for his hometown Boston Red Sox ended with a shoulder injury in college. He pivoted to coaching instead. While in the dugout one day, though, Cole realized something: he was bored out of his mind.
“If I’m bored, there’s gotta be other people that are probably bored with baseball as well,” he said.
That moment started Cole on the path to creating “Banana Ball,” a faster, livelier, more dynamic twist on baseball that’s become a huge hit with fans and a viral sensation on social media.
The man in yellow
Cole first started shaking things up when he became the general manager of the Grizzlies, a failing college summer league team in Gastonia, North Carolina. He started teaching players silly dance routines to perform between innings, and added fun and games for fans.
Cole also started wearing a yellow tux, inspired by his idols, showmen P.T. Barnum and Walt Disney.
“It’s something I believe in. It’s standing out. It’s being different. And if your owner is dressed up in a yellow tuxedo, I mean, I think that gives permission to everyone else to not take themselves too seriously, to have fun,” he said.
60 Minutes
Cole didn’t just bring fun to the Grizzlies; he also brought the team success. According to Cole, they went from among the lowest game attendance in their league, to the fourth best . And they started winning games. .
“We won championships,” Cole said. “When you have fun, you play better.”
It was also while working in Gastonia that Cole met the woman who would become his wife. Emily McDonald worked for the Grizzlies as the team’s “director of fun.” Cole proposed to her on the Grizzlies’ field during a game.
“Turning it up a little bit”
In 2015, Jesse and Emily Cole, now newlyweds, launched the Savannah Bananas as a new college summer league team in Savannah, Georgia. The Bananas built a devoted fan base, sold out stadiums, and won titles, but something kept gnawing at Cole: some fans were leaving before the game was over.
“It was eating me up inside,” Cole said. “But then I realized that means there’s a fundamental problem with the actual game.”
60 Minutes
He videotaped the crowd during games and studied the tapes, determined to find out when fans were looking down at their phones and not paying attention. Cole started dreaming up ideas for a faster, more exciting game and all-around fun experience for fans of all ages, even ones who don’t already love baseball.
“Obviously, it started from the idea of baseball. But now let’s just turn it up a little bit,” he said.
Turning it up Savannah Bananas style means the show starts hours before the game, with fans and players dancing outside the stadium. A team of young gymnasts — the Banana Splitz – perform on the field. There’s also a dance team made of grandmas called the Banana Nanas.
60 Minutes
Instead of traditional cheerleaders, there’s a motley crew of men, the Man-Nanas, who the Bananas also call the Dad-Bod Cheering Squad.Before the players take the field, there are crowd warm-ups and silly games to keep fans engaged.
“There’s almost 50 things that happen before the game starts,” Cole said.
Banana Ball vs. baseball
While the entertainment is scripted, the game itself is a real competition. It’s not traditional baseball though – it’s Banana Ball. Think baseball, with some rule twists. There is a two-hour time limit. Mound visits are forbidden, and if a fan catches a foul ball, it’s an out. There are also no walks.
“Think about this. In a baseball game, there’s a play called a walk. It’s unathletic. It’s called a walk,” Cole said. “What would be the exact opposite? A sprint.”
Courtesy Savannah Bananas
During one of Cole’s Banana Ball innovations, the “Ball 4 sprint,” the batter takes off running the bases and cannot be tagged out until every fielder has touched the ball.
“So now a walk becomes one of the most exciting plays in sports,” Cole said.
There’s also no bunting in Banana Ball. If a player bunts Banana Ball, he’s thrown out of the game, Cole said.
“I believe in baseball, Banana Ball, come up and swing the bat. Try to create something really special instead of the bunt,” Cole said.
Trick plays, including in-between-the-leg throws and back flip catches, are encouraged. Banana Ball also features choreographed dances, in which players lip sync to famous songs as they come to the plate to bat.
Finding Banana Ball players
Cole, who also owns the Party Animals — the Savannah Bananas’ main rival — needed to find the right mix of players to try out his vision for Banana Ball .
Coaches Tyler Gillum and Adam Virant helped create the new game and recruit players to try it out. At first, their exclusive focus was finding strong baseball players.
One athlete who came to tryouts, Dakota Albritton, had played high school baseball in his Georgia hometown, then went to work in construction. He was pushing a wheelbarrow full of concrete when he got a call from his mother about the tryouts. She told Albritton she’d signed him up and had even told the team that he was able to walk on stilts. She failed to mention that he hadn’t used the stilts in 10 years. He’d gotten them as a Christmas present when he was 10.
60 Minutes
On the way to tryouts, Albritton realized the straps on the stilts had rotted from lack of use. They stopped at a tractor supply store and bought dog collars, which Albritton used to strap the stilts onto his legs.
“He had played high school baseball. Not the highest level. And he probably wasn’t gonna make the team,” Cole said. “He said, ‘I brought my stilts. Do you want me to wear ’em?’ And I said, ‘Nuh-uh. Unless you can hit in ’em.'”
Albritton insisted he could.
“I had no idea I could do it, but I wasn’t gonna back down from a challenge,” Albritton said.
The entire tryout stopped as Albritton approached the plate on his stilts and then managed to hit the ball, surprising himself just as much as everyone else.
The coaches, who were still focused on hiring the very best baseball talent, planned to cut Albritton, until Cole intervened. He reminded them that his vision for Banana Ball was things being done on a baseball field that no one had ever seen. A player batting on stilts could not be passed over.
Other players, like RobertAnthony Cruz, joined the Bananas with stronger baseball credentials. He’d been signed by the Washington Nationals, but was released one year later.
Savannah Bananas players said they’d all dreamed of playing in the Major Leagues. When that dream didn’t work out, they thought they were done playing the sport they loved.
They say Banana Ball has offered a second life. They’re still practicing traditional baseball skills, plus one-upping each other on trick plays, antics, and on-field dances.
Banana Ball players have full-year contracts and are paid significantly more than most minor leaguers. Their salaries have risen every year, as has their fan base.
Growing popularity
One couple told 60 Minutes they drove 10 hours to come to a game in Savannah. Last season, the Bananas made it to the big leagues, playing in six Major League Baseball stadiums, including Cole’s hometown stadium, Fenway Park. Tickets to all six sold out.
The Bananas now have more TikTok followers than all 12 of last year’s MLB playoff teams combined.Banana Ball is now a multimillion dollar private business. To build fans, Cole reinvests. He keeps ticket prices low — $60 max — and broadcasts all games free on YouTube.
This year , Banana Ball has officially become a league, with two more teams: the Firefighters and the Texas Tailgaters. They’ll play at 17 MLB stadiums, and also, for the first time, at three NFL stadiums. Those football stadiums, which seat between 65,000 and 75,000 fans each, are already sold out.
