"What's the deal with the Savannah Bananas?"
Like five different times over the past few months, someone at this website has posed that question to the rest of the folks who work here. For the uninitiated, I will begin with the most dispassionate, factual answer in the paragraph below.
The Savannah Bananas are a group often described as baseball's Harlem Globetrotters. Originally a legit college summer league team, they got popular by playing sillier exhibition games under modified rules (called "Banana Ball"), and before long they ditched the Coastal Plain League and went all in as a barnstorming troupe. They're big on TikTok, and that brand awareness has translated into a bunch of sold-out stadium games with major celebrity cameos, like Ryan Howard picking up a bat (and striking out on three pitches) in Philadelphia.
The Bananas' social team wields a mastery of upbeat algorithmic content, with the Bananas churning out slick, completely inoffensive short-form videos that rack up views. Look at the baseball show; the umpires dance, too!
Even with all their followers, however, the way they've translated this social-media success into real-life supersized crowds was pretty confusing to us, and I was brave enough to volunteer to answer our questions definitively by watching Saturday night's Banana Ball broadcast on ESPN2. It was the Bananas against their usual opponents, the Party Animals, in front of what was announced on TV as more than 70,000 at the NFL field in Nashville. Cam Ward was there. Jevon Kearse was there. Dierks Bentley, though never a Tennessee Titan, was there. And here's one thing I liked: This guy did a flip while making a routine outfield catch. Neat!
How was the rest of the game, you ask? Well, it's everything in the Bananas' zippy TikToks, padded out to two hours with all the additional time it takes to actually make them. Banana Ball, outside your phone, is a slog, with issues that stem from both the challenges of baseball as a sport and the Bananas' inability to think beyond Hype House aesthetics. I say this as someone who watched on TV and therefore had a close-up view of everything that was happening on the field. For someone who bought tickets, I imagine it's like sitting on a hill at the park watching some grown men film each other dancing on a baseball diamond far away. I saw the Harlem Globetrotters as a kid, and while I can't speak to how they hold up in 2025, comparing the Bananas to the Globetrotters is like comparing the wild mouse coaster at your local fair to Space Mountain. Banana Ball feels cheap and unworthy of your time.
The problem begins with the fact that, despite the fast pace and the tweaked rules, this is a real competitive baseball game played by low-level talent. Pitchers don't always hit their spots, and batters struggle to make solid contact, so you end up with at-bats whose only dose of "fun" are random cuts to other players dancing. (There is so much dancing.) While the players indulge in some random intentional gags that directly impact play—the relief pitcher on stilts was fine—the goofiness is mostly stuck on the periphery, and the extremely difficult nature of hitting a baseball means the Bananas are often hamstrung by their own batting averages. There was one guy, for example, who sang his walk-up song for the whole stadium—kinda cute—and then struck out with runners in scoring position—pretty embarrassing. If you're into mid-inning gimmicks, like burly men dressed up like Dolly Parton, padded bust and all, racing each other in high heels, then maybe the magic of the Bananas will hold your attention longer. But even a backflip catch felt a little less exciting when I saw it again in the seventh inning.
However, the game action itself isn't my main problem with the presentation—it's the dull weightlessness of the whole night. If the Bananas were a "real" minor-league baseball team, I'd have no criticism of them whatsoever. They'd be a Georgia curiosity in the perfectly respectable business of trying to draw fans by any means necessary. The Savannah citizens would show up, root for Their Guys, and guffaw at all the antics. The fatal flaw is when the Bananas play the Party Animals in a stadium like Nashville, and the entire idea of "Your Guys" disappears. Yes, in theory, the Bananas are more famous and are therefore our heroes. But the Party Animals, from a team culture standpoint, are completely indistinguishable from the supposed protagonists. They dance, they wear jerseys that show off their hot bods, and they show just as much personality as the team that bats in the bottom half.
So where's the hook? Where's the drama? Where's the suspense? Even at the most vapid level of kids entertainment, the audience should be wanting someone to do something. But regardless of who's scoring or who's winning, the mood in the park is always exactly the same, and it makes for a static and glazed-over viewing experience where there's little to anticipate or celebrate. A gigantic part of the genius of the Globetrotters concept comes from their foil, the Washington Generals, whose staid style of traditional basketball elevates the clever inventiveness of their opponents. Of course the viewer wants the fun team to triumph over the stuffy team. But in Banana Ball, there's no telling the difference between the two. In fact, the Party Animals actually made the coolest play of the whole night—a game-ending diving catch at short with the tying run on second. That's not even Banana Ball. That's just baseball.
So what does someone want to see in a Savannah Bananas game? I guess they want to see the players dance. But they saw that already online. There's no need to go to the stadium and catch it again with a worse view. Just give your local minor-league boys a shot this summer. They're probably doing something almost as weird.
