A hurler on stilts. Lip syncing, dancing and flaming baseball bats. Between-inning races that feature crawling babies (nowhere near the flaming bats).
The stunts may draw to mind late White Sox owner and showman Bill Veeck, but these antics, many of which will be on display on the South Side this weekend, are part of a different show — a phenomenon, really.
When the Savannah Bananas take the field at Rate Field Friday and Saturday evenings, it will be the first time Chicago gets a taste of what’s come to be known as Banana Ball (think baseball’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters).
“The Bananas are the perfect combination of a world where baseball meets a circus, meets a concert … something for everybody,” said team spokesman Sam Bauman.
Banana Ball — with a tagline of “We Make Baseball Fun!” — has a different set of rules compared to traditional baseball.
Games do not exceed two hours. There’s no bunting (any bunters are tossed from games). Stepping out of the batters box results in an automatic strike. Batters can steal first at any time. And there are no walks. After four balls, the batter begins rounding bases and can’t be tagged out until every player, minus the pitcher, touches the ball.
The two Chicago games will see the Bananas play the Savannah Firefighters. The exhibition league’s two other teams — the Texas Tailgaters and the Savannah Party Animals —are playing in Arkansas this weekend.
Eras Tour for Banana Ball fans
The unique game took shape in 2020 as a novel way for a traditional collegiate summer league team from Savannah, Georgia, to occasionally entertain fans.
It’s evolved into a juggernaut.
The Savannah Bananas exited the Coastal Plain League in 2022 and leaned into Banana Ball full time — taking their show on an ever-expanding tour that last year filled seven Major League Baseball ballparks.
This year its schedule includes 17 major league ballparks, three NFL stadiums, one game at Clemson University’s Memorial Stadium, which holds more than 81,000 fans, and a slew of games at minor league and college ballparks.
More than two million fans will see them live. Every game is sold out.
Fans enter a lottery to get tickets. There are 3.5 million fans in the lottery queue. Tickets to a game are capped at $60, but are resold for several times that amount.
Chicago attorney Michael Phelps was lucky enough to procure tickets to take his wife and two sons.
“They are absolutely stoked,” he said. “We kind of surprised them; I wish we would have recorded it. It was like one of those moments where you tell them you’re going and they reacted like we were going to Disney World or something.”
His son, Ryan, 10, is on a Chicago team that chose to be called the Bananas. Phelps is the coach.
“They don’t take it that seriously. They have fun with the game a lot more,” Ryan said.
Phelps said his family would have traveled to other Midwest states to see the Bananas if they hadn’t gotten tickets this weekend.
“People kind of compare it to trying to get Taylor Swift tickets … but much less expensive,” said Melissa Potdar, who also has a son on the youth league Bananas team that plays out of Welles Park in Lincoln Square.
Swinging big
The creator of Banana Ball is Jesse Cole, who, in a yellow tuxedo, doubles as the ringmaster of the baseball circus.
Cole played Division 1 baseball at Wofford College in South Carolina and dreamed of playing professionally but was derailed by injury.
He tried coaching and at 23 became general manager of the Gastonia Grizzlies, a collegiate summer league team in Gastonia, North Carolina, but felt something was missing from the games — fans.
He began tinkering with ways to draw a crowd, like giving away whoopee cushions on Flatulence Fun Night, resulting in record attendance for the team. On a honeymoon in Savannah with his wife, Emily, who’s a Bananas co-owner, the newlyweds dreamed of owning a team in the historic coastal city and its minor league ballpark, Grayson Stadium. When the team that played there relocated, Cole and his wife jumped on the opportunity to operate a team there. It became Savannah Bananas — a name chosen by fans in a contest.
Cole leans into a mantra his dad taught him: Swing big, you might just hit it, Bauman said.
They are words one can imagine would make former White Sox owner Bill Veeck smile.
Veeck pulled off a number of stunts in Chicago, including in 1959 when a helicopter landed behind second base in the old Comiskey Park and three little men dressed as martians deboarded to present ray guns to two White Sox players of short stature.
“Jesse Cole is a great admirer and great fan of the Veecks and took a lot of what they did and used that to help propel what the Bananas have become,” said Bauman, who hinted at the Bananas paying homage to the White Sox and their history this weekend, but wouldn’t tip his hand.