I watched the Savannah Bananas and now I don’t know what baseball is anymore

Okay, so I finally did it. I sat down and watched a full Savannah Bananas game — or show — or whatever we’re calling it — and I have been sitting with my feelings ever since.

Because on one hand, it is genuinely the most fun I’ve had watching anything involving a baseball diamond in a very long time. On the other hand, I cannot stop asking myself if what I just watched was baseball or a really athletic episode of America’s Got Talent.

Both things can be true. That’s where I’m stuck.

What even are the Savannah Bananas?

The Savannah Bananas are a traveling baseball entertainment show — emphasis on entertainment — founded in 2016 by Jesse Cole in Savannah, Georgia. They started as an actual collegiate summer league team, then slowly evolved into something that defies easy categorization. Now they tour the country doing trick shots, dance routines, audience participation bits, and yes, actual baseball skills executed in the most chaotic way possible.

Think Harlem Globetrotters but with cleats. That’s the comparison everyone makes and honestly it fits.

Tickets sell out in minutes. Their Instagram videos rack up millions of views. They have a waitlist for tickets that is reportedly longer than some people’s patience for the actual MLB season.

Is this still baseball, though?

This is the question that keeps me up at night — okay not literally, but you know what I mean.

The Savannah Bananas play by a modified ruleset called Banana Ball. Some of the actual rules: fans can catch foul balls for outs, players can steal first base, and if a batter catches a pitch, the pitcher is out. There are also bonus points for style. STYLE POINTS. In baseball.

I genuinely don’t know if I think this is brilliant or if it’s the clearest sign yet that we as a society have a collective three-second attention span and can no longer tolerate a sport that sometimes takes four hours to produce a 1-0 game.

But what do I know?

The case FOR the Bananas being the best thing in sports right now

Here’s where I have to be honest with myself: the joy is real. Watching a first baseman break into a full choreographed dance routine mid-inning while somehow still making the play — that is athletic. That is genuinely hard to do. These players are not faking their skill level.

Regular baseball has been bleeding younger viewers for years. According to a 2023 report from Morning Consult, the average age of an MLB viewer skews significantly older than most other major sports. The Bananas are pulling kids into stadiums who would otherwise never voluntarily watch a baseball game.

If the gateway drug to loving sports is a guy doing a backflip over a catcher and somehow still making the throw, I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

The case AGAINST — and I have to steel-man this one

The strongest argument against the Bananas isn’t that they’re lowbrow or silly. It’s actually more interesting than that.

When you remove real stakes, you remove the thing that makes sports emotionally meaningful. Nobody is crying when the Bananas lose. Nobody’s championship dreams are crushed. The tension that makes a 3-2 count in the ninth inning feel like your heart is trying to escape your chest — that requires something to actually matter. The Bananas, by design, have opted out of mattering in that way.

And there’s a real argument that normalizing sports-as-pure-spectacle makes it harder for actual competitive sports to hold attention. If everything needs to be a show, what happens to the slow burn, the strategic patience, the sport as craft?

I hear that. I genuinely do. I just also watched a guy walk on his hands to first base and I screamed.

Why people are obsessed — and it’s not because we’ve given up

Here’s what I actually think is going on. People aren’t flocking to the Savannah Bananas because they hate sports. They’re flocking because they’re starving for fun.

Sports culture has gotten so heavy. The analytics discourse, the injury news cycles, the contract drama, the discourse about the discourse. Sometimes people just want to go to a stadium, eat something fried, and watch a grown man in yellow pants pretend to be a pirate while also throwing a perfect strike.

The Bananas figured that out and built an empire on it. Good for them, honestly.

Back when I was writing about what makes entertainment actually land, the thing that kept coming up was permission. People need permission to just enjoy something without justifying it. The Bananas hand you that permission at the gate along with your ticket.

Should you actually go if they come to your town?

Yes. That’s my take. Go.

Bring someone who thinks they hate baseball. Bring someone who loves baseball and needs to be reminded it can be fun. Bring anyone who looks like they need to laugh for two hours straight.

Just don’t go expecting to care about the score. Go expecting to have the kind of good time you mostly only have when you’re a kid and someone says yes to everything for a whole afternoon.

If you want to check out what all the noise is actually about before you commit to ticket prices, their social media does a pretty good job of showing you exactly what you’re signing up for. And in my ongoing attempt to figure out what’s worth actually spending money on, the Bananas land firmly in the yes column.

What this means for baseball — the big picture question

The MLB has actually been paying attention. The new pitch clock rules introduced in 2023 cut average game time by about 25 minutes. They’re trying. They know they have a pacing problem.

But the Bananas aren’t really competition for MLB. They’re filling a completely different need. One is sport. One is spectacle. Both can exist. They’ve always both existed — we just forgot that for a while.

The Harlem Globetrotters didn’t kill the NBA. Cirque du Soleil didn’t make people stop going to the circus — wait, actually the circus had other problems. Bad example.

The point is: the Savannah Bananas are not a sign we’ve given up on competition. They’re a sign that joy is a product people will pay for. And in the larger conversation about what sports actually owe us as fans, that feels pretty important.

So here’s where I landed after all my feelings: the Savannah Bananas are not the death of baseball. They’re not even the death of serious baseball. They’re just a very loud, very yellow reminder that watching sports is supposed to feel like something.

If a backflip over home plate is what it takes to get someone to love baseball, I’m calling that a win. Even if it’s also kind of a show. Even if the score doesn’t matter.

Sometimes the most competitive thing you can do is let yourself just have fun.

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