# Savannah Bananas

The Savannah Bananas are an exhibition barnstorming baseball team based in Savannah, Georgia. They play a unique brand of baseball called Banana Ball, which emphasizes trick plays, showmanship, fan participation, and speed. The players engage in dance routines, comedic sketches, and other performances between, and sometimes during, innings. They are often compared to the Harlem Globetrotters, but with the key difference that Savannah Bananas games are unscripted and competitive, with real baseball action. There are four teams of players, many of whom are former minor league and college baseball players, with former MLB athletes as occasional special guest players.
The team was founded in 2016 with Grayson Stadium as its home ballpark. 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). In 2018, they began playing exhibition games outside of the CPL season under the Banana Ball format. In 2023, the team transitioned entirely to exhibition games against their partner touring teams, the Party Animals, the Firefighters, and the Texas Tailgaters, similar to the decades-long format of basketball's Harlem Globetrotters and their partner touring team, the Washington Generals.
They have played in front of sellout crowds in MLB and NFL stadiums across the country. The team has been featured by ESPN, The Wall Street Journal, CNN 10, and Sports Illustrated because of its sports entertainment 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 (CPL) 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.
In 2016, the 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.
In 2018, the team created the alternative "Banana Ball" rule set and played its first intrasquad exhibition game using the new format. As the format became more popular, the team played more of its home games with Banana Ball rules, while playing away games under the standard CPL rules. The owner noted that this distinction, where the Bananas were effectively two different teams playing with two different rules, confused fans who might not know what to expect when they came to a game. In 2020 the Savannah Party Animals debuted as the opponent in Banana Ball games, similar to the relationship between the Harlem Globetrotters and the Washington Generals. Unlike Globetrotter exhibitions, the teams are more even and the Bananas do not win all games. Following the 2022 summer league season, the Bananas announced they were folding their collegiate amateur team and only playing Banana Ball, both in Savannah and on the road as a barnstorming team.
In August that year, ESPN+ released a miniseries about the team called Bananaland. As of 2023, the team has over six million followers on TikTok, more than any MLB team.
In 2023, Jocelyn Alo became the first woman to play for the Bananas, getting an at bat in one of their games. In 2024, the team announced that Alo had become the first female member of the Bananas, and signed a one-month contract.

## Banana Ball world tours
### 2021

The Bananas announced their first "world" tour called the One City World Tour, where they traveled to Mobile, Alabama, and sold out both nights in Hank Aaron Stadium, with a combined crowd of over 7,000 fans.

### 2022

The Bananas added six more cities across four different states to the tour, creating a 14-game "world" tour in which all games were sellouts. While the majority of Banana Ball games feature the Bananas versus the rival Party Animals, the Bananas introduced a "Challenger Series" in which they play against a different opponent. The first such series was played May 5–6 against the Kansas City Monarchs of the American Association of Professional Baseball and saw each team win one game.

### 2023

The "world" tour was expanded to over 80 games, with the team implementing their new exhibition-only status. The tour was scheduled to start at The Ballpark of the Palm Beaches in Florida on February 17 and end seven months later at Doubleday Field in Cooperstown, New York. The tour also includes numerous challenger games against teams such as the Charleston Dirty Birds, Southern Maryland Blue Crabs, Florence Y'alls, The MLB Players Alumni Association, and a rematch with the Kansas City Monarchs. Additionally, the Bananas played their first international opponent, the Aussie Drop Bears, a team from Australia featuring professional and collegiate players.

### 2024

The "world" tour kicked off its 2024 season at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Florida on February 8 and ended eight months later at LoanDepot Park in Miami, followed by a trip on a cruise ship to The Bahamas called "Bananaland at Sea". The tour also included 5 other MLB ballparks: Nationals Park, Washington, D.C.; Minute Maid Park in Houston; Fenway Park in Boston; Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia; and Progressive Field in Cleveland.

### 2025

The Savannah Bananas announced they would play games in 40 cities in 2025, including three NFL stadiums and 17 MLB stadiums. Their first NFL stadium game was at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, where they played in front of a sold-out crowd of 65,000.

## Attendance

In their inaugural 2016 season, the Savannah Bananas ranked second in average attendance among 160 summer collegiate teams, as reported by Ballpark Digest. They averaged 3,659 fans per game across 22 regular season home games, with 17 sellouts, totaling 80,504 fans and breaking the Coastal Plain League single-season attendance record. Including postseason games, they hosted 91,004 fans with 18 total sellouts. This also set a record for the highest average attendance in the history of Grayson Stadium.
The Bananas recorded over 500,000 total fans in attendance on their Banana Ball World Tour in 2023. The team drew their largest attendance on March 15, 2025, with 65,000 spectators at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, a football stadium.

## Television coverage

Banana Ball made its national television debut in 2022 through a 6 game agreement with ESPN. One game aired on ESPN2, with the remaining games on ESPN+. The agreement returned in 2023 with 1 game on ESPN2 and two others on ESPN+.
The Bananas significantly expanded its television coverage for the 2024 season. In April 2024, the Bananas announced that 19 games would air on Stadium and Bally Live. In July 2024, the Bananas announced a 5 game agreement with ESPN. For the first time, three games will air on ESPN with two others airing on ESPN2 as part of the annual ESPN8 The Ocho event. In August 2024, the Bananas announced an agreement with TNT Sports to exclusively air 5 games on TruTV.