What is it like to watch the Savannah Bananas live?

The Savannah Bananas cater to two audiences, and it doesn’t always work

Independent baseball team The Savannah Bananas have taken a corner of the internet by storm with their stunt catches, TikTok dances, and stilt/astronaut helmet/superhero cape wearing players, but watching them play in person at their sold-out Fenway Park game last year was something else entirely. Before I get into the strange and often bewildering experience of attending a Banana Ball game, let me first explain (as well as anyone can), the phenomenon known as the Savannah Bananas. 

The Bananas’ origins were humble, beginning in 2016 as a minor league team in the summer collegiate Coastal Plain League. In 2018, the team debuted what is now known as “Banana Ball,” and played its first exhibition game by a set of new rules. These dictated that no bunts or walks are allowed, any foul ball caught by a fan counts as an out, and games are set to a maximum length of two hours. 

Lest you begin to believe that Banana Ball is all about a new set of baseball rules, it is worth emphasizing that the Bananas are mostly about entertainment. And the type of entertainment that Banana Ball provides is loud and flashy. Their gimmicks have gimmicks — players do backflips, pitch from trampolines, leapfrog over pitchers to throw home. And then there’s the Banana Nanas (a dance group made up of elderly ladies), Princess Potassia (the singing princess of Bananaland), a baby race, and more - if you can believe it. 

I became aware of the Savannah Bananas the way most people became aware of them: TikTok. While many professional sports teams now lean into social media video to reach younger audiences, those videos typically focus on trends that are easily squeezed into the extra moments of a busy practice day, like having players sign embarrassing childhood photos of themselves or asking players for their “hot takes” on their way to the field. The Savannah Bananas’ social media is not as marginal to their playing. In fact, it seems central to the Bananas, as it frames the players as social-media stars. 

While the Savannah Bananas’ multiple social media feeds feature gimmick plays like the trampoline pitcher and leapfrogging outfielder, what really pops — and what the Bananas are known for — is the dancing. The Bananas are all choreographed dancers, including the first base coach (who is a professional choreographer and knew little about baseball when he was first hired) and the umpire, who famously twerks. At the game I attended, I even spotted a cameraman dancing in step with the uniformed players. 

The Banana’s early viral videos featured players lip synching pop songs and twirling majestically across the baseball field. They featured pitchers backed up by his outfielders in a choreographed number during an at bat. The videos were fun and funny, and had this cool modern masculinity that wasn’t worried about performing the feminine. They also lacked the dour seriousness often found in professional baseball.

As a newer fan of baseball, I’m anything but a purist, and I understand the benefit of sheer entertainment value as a way to bring new and younger fans into the sport. In that way, I find what the Savannah Bananas are doing really important. The Bananas have taken baseball and reshaped it into entertainment for the social media age. Straight baseball could certainly stand to have a bit more fun and personality mixed in. And the Savannah Bananas’ wacky, player-centric content has been wildly successful. Over the past few years, the team has garnered 8.6 million followers on TikTok and 3 million on Instagram (not to mention selling out every game). Yet — the experience of actually attending a Savannah Banana game was very different from what I had expected it to be. 

It was certainly an exciting atmosphere at Fenway Park, and definitely busier and louder than the weekday Red Sox v. Braves game I had attended earlier that week. The lines for Savannah Banana merch booths were half an hour long minimum; there were children everywhere, not to mention photo ops; a live band led a parade of players through the crowd and into the stadium. I couldn’t wait to see what the game itself would be like.

Once the game itself started, though, I began to realize that the Savanna Bananas experience that I was watching online was not the same experience as watching in person. Trick plays and back flips were amusing … for a while, as was the blasting music. But it began to grate sooner than I had expected, and I missed the added stakes of a broader season-long narrative where a win or a loss means something. While the Banana-bits might be fun for a minute on TikTok, it felt stale after about an hour, and I don’t think I was the only one with that experience. 

Just a few innings in, I spotted groups of adults standing by the beer stand, chatting about the strange intensity of the whole experience. People were having fun, but a good chunk of the audience was already gone by the time the two hour already-truncated game finished. 

This isn’t to say that people don’t usually leave ballgames early or that there aren’t plenty of bored kids and bored adults at your standard MLB game, but Banana Ball is about mass entertainment, and people didn’t seem as entertained as I expected them to be. This boredom partially came from Banana-mania overstimulation, but I also think it came from the fact that the much of the “performance” seemed catered to a digital audience. 

Watching the Savannah Bananas play was like watching a pop star singing to documentary cameras instead of to the audience in the seats. The screens in the stadium weren’t really directed to catch all the fun dances as you’d see them on social media, so you were only seeing them from far away (unless you were really close to the field) and at a weird angle. Bits like the baby race, Banana Nanas, and Princess Potassia worked better in person, but the rest fell flat. Over time, it felt more like I was watching people film social content than watching a “show” (as the Bananas call it), and I left the game believing strongly that the best way to take in the Savannah Bananas is through TikTok. 

There’s no debate to be had about the Bananas’ success in reaching a wide audience through their social media presence—- the fact that the team can sell out major league stadiums speaks to that — but I do believe that in splitting their focus between their in-person audience and online audience, the Savannah Bananas leave their in-person audience behind. That issue could be remedied, perhaps by something as simple as finding a way to film more of the up-close dancing live for the jumbotron. It isn't impossible to make a stadium performance work (in fact, pop stars do it every day). But the Bananas would have to prioritize their in-person audience at games instead of their digital one. 

There is the question, of course, about whether the needs of the online many outweigh the needs of the in-person few. But, if Banana Ball is really about getting more people into baseball and about making baseball fun, it has to sustain its own fans' engagement beyond the confines of a minute-long video.