Goin’ Bananas: How a minor league team got more followers than the Yankees

When Brian Nichols had a shot at hopping on the Savannah Bananas “world tour” this year, the guy known as the “Sexy Sax” didn’t hesitate. 

As the musician traveled to far-flung locales like ... Alabama to showcase the team’s unique take on baseball – Banana Ball – he could hardly believe what he was seeing.

An obscure team from the Coastal Plain League was selling out other teams’ stadiums. And the crowds were going bananas.

“What kind of a sports team goes on a world tour?” says Mr. Nichols from behind golden Ray-Bans. “When we go into these stadiums where 200, 300 people usually show up and we sell it out, people notice. We’re modernizing baseball.” 

OK, he’s partial. But the Bananas are truly in a league of their own. They are a team with appeal – and their own brass band. 

Even as baseball is in a slump, the Bananas, which field amateur players hoping to play in front of scouts, have 60,000 folks on their waiting list. And their antics are TikTok gold. Their cheerleaders: the dad-bod-glorious “Man-Nanas.” The “Banana Nanas” are a dance troupe over age 65. The team has over 3 million social media followers. That’s more than the Yankees. Did we mention they wear yellow kilts?

“Baseball is in a crisis, and it tells us about our society: We want a quick fix, fast action, or entertainment,” says sports historian Thomas Zeiler, co-author of “National Pastime: U.S. History Through Baseball.” “And that really is what this Savannah team hit on: ‘Listen, this is baseball. But what we are really about is entertainment.’”

The team’s success since it launched in 2016 can be traced back to what owner Jesse Cole’s father, Kerry, once told him: “Swing hard, in case you hit it.” 

The rise of the Bananas as a social media phenomenon is contrasting sharply with deeper woes with baseball writ large. 

In that light, the team, some baseball historians say, is offering a return to a sandlot mentality. The club and its fans aren’t just a reminder of the game’s past. They may be a glimpse of its future.

“It’s great to see people thinking about putting the fans first and having it be an entertainment product where people can participate in a communal event for the night and go home with a smile on their face,” says Patrick Brown, a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and a lifelong baseball fan. 

Today, the sport, critics contend, seems as confused as the rest of the country about where it is going. 

Major League Baseball games are getting longer as at-bats drone on. Scoring is down. Players live in different ZIP codes from their fans. Advertisers appear happy as long as the TV shows folks in the stands behind home plate. The crickets in the rest of the stadium don’t seem to matter to the bottom line. 

“‘We’re healthy, our revenue streams are up, but we know it’s no longer the national pastime,’” one MLB executive recently told Dr. Zeiler, a historian at the University of Colorado-Boulder.

University of Pittsburgh sports historian Rob Ruck predicts a “national sports recession” if fans keep decamping.

In that way, he says, the Bananas are starting to look like sandlot saviors.

“The Savannah team has tapped into the reaction [of] ... people who love sport for a lot of good reasons, but hate the business of sport,” says Dr. Ruck, author of “The Tropic of Baseball.” “It’s kind of a return to the past, which sounds like it would be a healthy antidote to what’s going on in the present.”

Mr. Cole, the 30-something owner who cites P.T. Barnum as an inspiration and wears a yellow tux, traces Bananaland to one moment: A 23-year-old coach of a minor-league team in the Carolinas, he sat bored in the dugout, waiting for the game to end so he could go home.

He wondered: Why can’t the game change? It turns out that many of his innovations fit a tradition in early baseball of regional rules. Among them: Games have a two-hour time limit, fans can catch fly balls for outs, and players can steal first base. At the same time, the Bananas are thoroughly tuned to a TikTok world.

“The Bananas are doing the best of both: They are getting the spontaneity and joy and ragtagness of early baseball with the modern sense of time,” which is far faster than when the game was invented before the Civil War, says Sarah Gronningsater, a historian at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Gronningsater says the Bananas were first brought to her attention in her history of baseball class by a British student who spotted the team on TikTok.

The seeming spontaneity on the field is intended to create moments. But each game is carefully scripted, says Mr. Cole. Miscues, misfires, and mistakes are valued as much as when things go right. Players and staff are encouraged to be themselves – just to the power of 10.

There’s a dancing first-base coach who admittedly knows more about backflips than baseball. Meanwhile, the janitor became one of the dugout coaches during last year’s championship season. There’s the slowest race in the world: crawling toddlers! Concessions are included as part of the ticket. Grayson Stadium, where Jackie Robinson once played and Babe Ruth hit a home run, is free of ads and billboards. Instead, there’s a Fan Wall, covered with fan signatures.

They are also Coastal Plain League champions who spit-roasted the Holly Springs Salamanders 9-2 on Tuesday night, with Bananas players splitting at-bats with choreographed shimmying contests with local dancers. 

The Salamanders looked helplessly on from a scrum of folding chairs that served as their dugout. It can’t help but raise comparisons to another team famous for its flair, athleticism, and globetrotting ways.

“Like at a [Harlem] Globetrotters game, you almost feel bad for the other team,” says Dr. Zeiler.

“You feel lucky just to get a ticket,” says Vik Manocha, a college student who grew up on nearby Wilmington Island. “There’s just a buzz about a team that’s really trying to change baseball.”

However, not every one in the stand prizes showmanship over sportsmanship. A lifelong baseball fan, Jim Joyce remembers going to Savannah Redlegs games in the mid-1950s with his father.

“I can only muster up energy to come to one game a year, and, look at me, I’m leaving after the fifth inning,” says Mr. Joyce. “It’s something, but it isn’t baseball.” 

“I agree baseball needs reform,” he adds. “I’d accept a pitching clock [to speed up at-bats]. Can’t a guy just hope for a happy medium?”

Not that night. Behind him, an entire stadium can be heard singing along to Coldplay’s “Yellow,” cellphone lamps lit. 

“’Cause you were all yellow,” the crowd booms.