Savannah Bananas

The Savannah Bananas are an exhibition baseball team based in Savannah, Georgia. The team was founded in 2016 and has played at Grayson Stadium since its inaugural season. Until 2022, the Bananas competed as a collegiate summer baseball team in the Coastal Plain League's (CPL) West division, where they won three Petitt Cup championships (2016, 2021, and 2022). However, after the growth of their alternate "Banana Ball" format, the team transitioned entirely to exhibition games against their partner touring team, the Party Animals, and other "challenger" professional teams. The team has been featured by ESPN, ''The Wall Street Journal'', and ''Sports Illustrated'' because of its on-field hijinks and viral videos.

History

Following the departure of the South Atlantic League's Savannah Sand Gnats for Columbia, South Carolina, on September 22, 2015, the Coastal Plain League announced Savannah as its newest team to begin play for 2016. On February 25, following a name-the-team contest, the Bananas name, logo and colors were officially revealed by the team.

The 2016, Bananas ended their inaugural season as the first seed in the CPL West Division, earning home-field advantage for the first two games of the playoffs. In game one, the Bananas beat the Asheboro Copperheads, 3–2, with the first walk-off in franchise history. The Bananas then defeated the Forest City Owls, 2–0, to win the CPL West Division championship and advance to the Petitt Cup Championship. Game one of the championship was played at Grayson Stadium, where the Bananas defeated the Peninsula Pilots, 8–4. The team traveled to Hampton, Virginia, where the Pilots' 4–3 win in game two forced an all-or-nothing game three. The Bananas took home the Petitt Cup after a 9–7 win in game three. The Bananas were named the league's organization of the year in both 2016 and 2017.

Following the 2022 summer league season, the Bananas announced they were folding their collegiate amateur team and only playing "Banana Ball." An ESPN+ miniseries about the team, called ''Bananaland'', was released in August 2022. As of 2023, the team has over six million followers on TikTok, more than any MLB team.

Banana Ball World Tours

In 2021 the Bananas announced their first "world tour" where they traveled to Mobile, Alabama and sold out both nights in Hank Aaron Stadium, with a combined crowd of over 7000 fans. The majority of Banana Ball games feature the Bananas versus their rivals, the Party Animals, similar to the relationship between the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals. In 2022 the Bananas added six more cities across four different states to the tour, totaling to a 14 game "world tour" in which all games were sellouts. In 2022 the Bananas also introduced their first "Challenger Series" in which they played the first ever Banana Ball game against a team that was not the Party Animals. The series was played May 5th and 6th against the Kansas City Monarchs of the American Association of Professional Baseball and saw the Bananas take one of two games. The 2023 "world tour" has been the most ambitious yet for the Bananas. The 2023 tour consists of 32 different cities, starting at the The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches on February 17th, 2023, and ending seven months later on September 16th in Cooperstown, New York. The 2023 tour also added on numerous additional challenger games against teams such as the Kansas City Monarchs, Charleston Dirty Birds, Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, Florence Y'alls, and the Aussie Drop Bears.

"Banana Ball" rules

The Bananas have implemented 10 rules that deviate from standard baseball rules in creating the "banana ball" format. This format has been used since June 2020 at home and most touring exhibition games. The most recent rule, the challenge rule, was implemented during the 2023 World Tour.

# Games are won by points, instead of runs: the team that scores the most runs in an inning gets one point, except in the 9th inning when every run counts as one point.
# There is a two-hour time limit.
# Batters cannot step out of the batters box.
# Batters cannot bunt.
# Batters can attempt to steal first base at any point during the at-bat.
# Walks are now called sprints. After the fourth ball, the batter is allowed to advance as far around the bases as he can while the ball is sequentially thrown to all of the fielders apart from the pitcher, starting with the catcher; the ball remains dead, with the batter-runner not liable to be put out, until all fielders apart from the pitcher and catcher have touched the ball.
# No mound visits are allowed.
# Foul balls caught by fans are counted as outs.
# Ties are broken by what the Bananas call a "1 on 1 showdown" which can last at least three rounds. Each team selects a pitcher and hitter to face off, with the pitching team having only the pitcher, catcher, and a single fielder during the first round of the showdown. In the second round, the fielder is eliminated. If a third round is needed, the fielder is back but the bases are loaded. In any showdown inning, the hitter has to score a run in order to earn a point for the tiebreaker. A batter who draws a walk advances to second base, with the hitting team allowed to send a new batter to the plate. A showdown inning can only end with an out or a run scored.
# Each team is allowed to challenge one play per game. They can challenge a fair/foul ball, whether or not a runner is tagged out at home plate or on the basepath or if a catch was made. If a team wins the challenge, they retain their right to challenge the rest of the game. If the call stands after review, the team loses its right to challenge the rest of the game. The fans also can challenge one play per game, one fan is chosen who initiates the challenge. The play is reviewed by the broadcast team who relays their ruling to the umpire.

Attendance

The Bananas recorded over 80,000 total fans at 25 home games in 2016. The team also ranked second in average attendance (3,659 fans per game) among 160 collegiate summer teams across the country.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the team reduced capacity to 30% to ensure safe distances between fans. They later reopened to full capacity after the 2021 season started.

References

External links

Savannah Bananas

Coastal Plain League

{{Sports in Georgia (U.S. state) , state=collapsed

2016 establishments in Georgia (U.S. state)
Amateur baseball teams in Georgia (U.S. state)
Baseball teams in Savannah, Georgia
Baseball teams established in 2016
Coastal Plain League
Sports entertainment