By Rich Lowry
Syndicated Columnist
The joy of banana ball
Major League Baseball is currently debating various rules changes to improve the game, when what it really needs is more players wearing capes and doing backflips.
That, at least, is the lesson of Savannah Bananas, the barnstorming team that has come up with a madcap version of baseball that is widely popular and selling out stadiums around the country.
The Bananas, or the Nanners, as devotees call them, sold out Clemson University’s Memorial Stadium back in April, with 81,000 in attendance. Tickets for a couple of games at Yankee Stadium in September are selling on secondary sites at rates significantly higher than any Yankees game.
Who’s Yankee ace Max Fried compared to Dakota Stilts, the Bananas pitcher who bestrides the mound standing at 10 feet and 9 inches on, yes, stilts? The Bananas and their handful of spin-off clubs have made the American pastime even more American.
Banana Ball, currently on what it calls a “world tour,” is the baseball equivalent of the carnival coming to town. It taps into the barnstorming baseball tradition that goes back to the 19th century, into the antic spirit of minor-league baseball with its corny entertainment between innings, and into the showmanship of the Harlem Globetrotters. Twerking and behind-the-back catches are all encouraged.
The Savannah Bananas were originally part of the Coastal Plain League, a summer league for college ballplayers. When the team’s exhibition games with modified rules proved more popular than their staid standard fare, they went all exhibition.
We associate baseball with lazy summer afternoons, but there’s nothing lazy about Banana Ball.
It takes everything dull or overly subtle about baseball and smashes it underfoot while dancing to a pop song.
At the end of the day, does anyone besides the true connoisseur enjoy seeing a batter try to bunt? In Banana Ball, bunting is strictly prohibited and any attempt will get the offending batter ejected from the game.
Then, there are walks. Who walks in a real sport? What is this, golf? In Banana Ball, after the pitcher issues a base-on-balls, every fielder besides the pitcher and catcher has to touch the ball before the runner can be tagged out. This creates an incentive for runners to actually run out of the batter’s box, and very often they reach second base.
Banana Ball, correctly, views incessant and unnecessary delay as the enemy of fan engagement. Batters can’t step out of the batter’s box. There are no visits to the mound. The game is timed and can’t last more than two hours. (MLB has taken steps in this direction with the wondrously successful innovation of the pitch clock, but can still do more to hustle things along.)
In loud and intense football stadiums, the fans are called “the 12th man.” In Banana Ball, the fans are literally the 10th fielder — if one of them catches a foul ball on the fly, the batter is out.
“Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America,” the French-American historian Jacques Barzun famously wrote, “had better learn baseball.”
Intellectuals aren’t going to rhapsodize about Banana Ball, but it says something about America, too. Its popularity shows how much we prize speed, constant entertainment and, oh yeah, viral moments on social media (which Banana Ball provides in abundance). Kids, in particular, love it.
Banana Ball isn’t a sacrilege against the game, any more than wiffle ball or beer-league softball are. It is a popularization of baseball and advertisement for it, demonstrating how a game that is perceived as dull and uneventful can be the occasion for rollicking fun.
We won’t be arguing decades from now about who was the best Banana Ball player of this era. We can enjoy the spectacle all the same.
The supposed inventor of baseball, Abner Doubleday, got much right. So, who can blame him for not realizing how much the game could be enhanced by adding musical numbers and having pitchers throw from trampolines?
Rich Lowry is editor of the National Review.
(c) 2025 by King Features Synd., Inc.