Bringing wackiness to baseball has been a home run for the Savannah Bananas | 60 Minutes
There is something unusual going on in a whole lot of Major League Baseball stadiums this season, and it isn’t baseball, well, at least not exactly. It’s “Banana Ball,” and if you’ve never heard of it, get ready for something, well.. bananas.
It’s a classic against-the-odds story, that started with a scrappy college-summer-league baseball team in Savannah, Georgia, lovingly named the Savannah Bananas.. with an unorthodox owner who dreamed of making America’s pastime livelier and more fun, with dancing players, trick plays, and non-stop entertainment for the fans. Think Harlem Globetrotters, only more so. Take a look.
It looks like baseball and feels like baseball. But then.. there’s this — an umpire feeling the music? A batter on, no, stilts? Gymnastics in the outfield.. and on the way home….
Banana Ball is the creation of Jesse Cole, who dresses in banana yellow daily. He’s the owner and ringmaster of this circus.
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Lesley Stahl: It’s not baseball. Or is it baseball?
Jesse Cole: Obviously, it started from the idea of baseball. But now let’s just turn it up a little bit.
“Turning it up a little bit” Savannah Bananas-style means the show starts hours before the game, with fans and players dancing outside before the doors open. Then, on the field.. gymnasts, the Banana Splitz; a dance team made up of grandmas, the Banana Nanas; and instead of cheerleaders, these guys, the Man-Nanas.
Jesse Cole: It’s all intentional. So this is the script.
Lesley Stahl: You have a script?
Jesse Cole: There’s almost 50 things that happen before the game starts.
The idea is to have something entertaining for everyone, like this 6-year-old leading a crowd warm-up, to appeal to all ages, baseball fans or not.
Lesley Stahl: How long in the car?
Woman in crowd: 10 hours.
Lesley Stahl: You drove here for 10 hours?!
The game itself, between the Bananas and their main Banana Ball rivals, the Party Animals, also owned by Cole, is a real baseball competition, with some rule twists — there’s a 2-hour time limit. No mound visits, no walks or bunts, and if a fan catches a foul ball, it’s an out. Trick plays like between-the-leg throws to make an out, and back flip catches, are encouraged. And a few times a game, players go to bat with lip-synched, choreographed productions, like this one featuring infielder Jackson Olson.
Courtesy Savannah Bananas 
Lesley Stahl: Longtime baseball writer Tim Kurkjian came to a game. And he said, “This is the stupidest thing I have ever seen.. I loved it.”
Jesse Cole: So grateful he finished with the, “I love it.”
Lesley Stahl: Exactly, right but, you know, there are people who would be offended that you’re changing baseball.
Jesse Cole: I believe if you’re not getting criticized, you’re playin’ it too safe.
Safe isn’t Jesse Cole’s style. His early dreams of playing for his hometown Red Sox ended with a shoulder injury in college that sent him into coaching, and a discovery he wasn’t expecting.
Jesse Cole: I’m sitting in the dugout and I realized something. I’m bored out of my mind.
Jesse Cole: And if I’m bored, there’s gotta be other people that are probably bored with baseball as well.
He got a job managing a failing college summer league team in Gastonia, North Carolina called the Grizzlies, where he started shaking things up with dancing and silliness.
Emily Cole: The first time I saw Jesse, he’s the general manager of the team, keep in mind.
Emily McDonald was working for a minor league team in Augusta at the time.
Emily Cole: He is on the field teaching his players how to do the Thriller dance.
Jesse Cole: You’ve gotta get the arms into it. You’ve gotta get the head.
Lesley Stahl: You said, “Oh. That guy’s for me.”
Emily Cole: Right away–
Jesse Cole: –But we nailed that dance. We nailed that dance.
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Emily joined the Grizzlies. And three years later, joined Jesse, permanently. And yes, he was already wearing that yellow tux, inspired by his idols, showmen P.T. Barnum and Walt Disney.
Jesse Cole: It’s something I believe in. It’s standing out. It’s being different. And if your owner is dressed up in a yellow tuxedo, I mean, (LAUGH) I think that gives permission to everyone else to not take themselves too seriously, to have fun.
Lesley Stahl: Were you able to turn the Grizzlies around?
Jesse Cole: Yeah. From the team that was probably worst in the country in attendance, we climbed up to be fourth in the country in attendance.
Lesley Stahl: But what about playing?
Jesse Cole: Oh. We won championships. When you have fun, you play better.
In 2015, the newlyweds launched the Bananas as a new college-summer-league team in Savannah, building fans with all-you-can-eat food, and always upping the fun. They won titles, but something kept gnawing at Jesse. Some fans were leaving the stadium before the game was over.
Lesley Stahl: Even with everything going on?
Jesse Cole: It was eating me up inside. But then I realized that means there’s a fundamental problem with the actual game.
He began videotaping the crowd and studying.
Jesse Cole: When are fans looking at their phones? When are they not paying attention to the game? Mound visits. Batters stepping out, taking forever. Alright, if you step out–
Lesley Stahl: Oh, I hate that.
Jesse Cole: Yes.
Lesley Stahl: And they play with their gloves–
Jesse Cole: And so we said, “What are all the normal rules of a baseball game? What would be the exact opposite?”
He started dreaming up ideas for a faster, more exciting game.
Courtesy Savannah Bananas 
Jesse Cole: Think about this. In a baseball game, there’s a play called a walk. It’s unathletic. It’s called a walk. So we said, What would be the exact opposite? A sprint.
And so was born the ball 4 sprint, where the batter takes off and can’t be tagged out until every fielder has touched the ball.
Jesse Cole: So now a walk becomes one of the most exciting plays in sports.
Jesse Cole: And then what about bunting? Now I know this is controversial, but if you bunt in Banana Ball, you’re thrown out of the game. There’s no–
Lesley Stahl: What’s wrong with bunting?
Jesse Cole: There’s no bunting.
Lesley Stahl: I like bunting.
Jesse Cole: Some traditionalists do. When I came up to the plate the first time as a five-year-old, my dad said, “Jess, swing hard in case you hit.” And I believe in baseball, Banana Ball, come up and swing the bat. Try to create something really special instead of the bunt.
Adam Virant: So that first tryout..
Coaches Tyler Gillum and Adam Virant helped create the new game and recruit players to try it out.
Lesley Stahl: You were looking for really strong baseball players?
Adam Virant: Exclusively.
Dakota Albritton: I was pushin’ a wheelbarrow full of concrete and my phone went off. And– it was my momma.
Dakota Albritton had played high school baseball in his Georgia hometown, then got a job in construction.
Dakota Albritton: She said, “Hey, we got a baseball tryout this weekend. I said, “Why’d you do that?” You know? “I ain’t played ball in two years.” She said, “Well, I told ’em you could walk on stilts.” And with me not having any knowledge on what the Bananas was, I asked her again, “Well, why’d you do that?” I hadn’t done that in 10 years.
Lesley Stahl: You hadn’t walked on stilts in–
Dakota Albritton: I had not–
Lesley Stahl: –ten years?
Dakota Albritton: –walked on stilts in ten years.
They’d been a Christmas present when he was 10.
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Dakota Albritton: Matter of fact, on the way to tryouts, I realized that the straps that held ’em on my legs were dry rotted, and we stopped by tractor supply and got dog collars that– They were– they were held on my leg by– by dog–
Lesley Stahl: Are you–
Dakota Albritton: –collars.
Lesley Stahl: –serious?
Dakota Albritton: [SMILES, NODS]
Jesse Cole: He had played high school baseball. Not the highest level. And he probably wasn’t gonna make the team. He said, “I brought my stilts. Do you want me to wear ’em?” And I said, “Nuh-uh. Unless you can hit in ’em.”
Dakota Albritton: I said, “Heck yeah I can.” I got up there-
Lesley Stahl: And you had no idea?
Dakota Albritton: I had no idea I could do it, but I wasn’t gonna back down from a challenge.
Adam Virant: And the entire tryout stops.
Lesley Stahl: I wonder why.
Adam Virant: It’s dead quiet.
Lesley Stahl: Did you hit the ball?
Dakota Albritton: I did. I surprised myself just as much as I surprised everybody else.
The coaches were still going to cut him, ’til Jesse intervened.
Adam Virant: Jesse says, “Guys, you don’t see the vision. The vision is things bein’ done on a baseball field nobody has ever seen.”
Other players, like RobertAnthony Cruz – RAC for short – joined the Bananas with stronger credentials. He’d been signed by the Washington Nationals. This video of him sharing the news with his dad, went viral. But as with so many players…
RobertAnthony Cruz: One year later I got released by the Nationals and– um my wife and I moved back in with my parents
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Bananas players told us they’d all dreamed of playing in the major leagues.
Lesley Stahl: Raise your hand. [ALL RAISE HANDS]
RobertAnthony Cruz: Yeah.
Lesley Stahl: When baseball didn’t work, did you all think you were done?
Voices: Yes. Yeah. Big time. 100%.
They say Banana Ball is a second life. They’re still practicing that old game, plus one-upping each other on cool tricks and smooth moves. That elaborate batter walk-up routine? Also part of afternoon practice.
Jackson Olson: Literally, like, four hours before the game.
Lesley Stahl: Oh my gosh.
Lesley Stahl: So in the middle of the afternoon, they are learning a dance for that night for the first time?
Jesse Cole: I mean, players, the talent level, they learn a tremendous amount of steps for about 20 minutes, 30 minutes’ rehearsal, and then they’re doing it in front of a sold out crowd.
And sometimes practicing in front of the crowd.
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Jackson Olson: I remember looking at you and you were doing the dance too, you were trying to learn it. Like, we were all trying to learn this stuff during the game.
D.R. Meadows: Keep it fresh.
Banana ball players have full-year contracts and are paid significantly more than most minor leaguers. Their salaries have risen every year, as has their fan base.
This was the home stadium of the Philadelphia Phillies on a Saturday night in September — a completely sold out, standing room only crowd of 45,000.
It was one of six Major League Baseball stadiums the Bananas sold out last season, including Fenway Park. With clips of dances like this going viral, the Bananas now have more TikTok followers than all 12 of last year’s MLB playoff teams combined.
As in Savannah, crowds gather hours early. Banana Ball is now a multi-million dollar private business — Jesse turns away investors. To build fans, he reinvests; he keeps ticket prices low — $60 max — and broadcasts all games free on YouTube.
playing in an mlb stadium, players told us, is thrilling.. even for someone already 10 feet tall.
Dakota Albritton: Just this section right here is big as my whole entire hometown.
“Stilts” told us he’d be pitching this game.
Lesley Stahl: Do you really throw strikes?
Dakota Albritton: Oh, absolutely. It comin’ straight down like that, they gotta hit it just perfect or they’re gonna ground out or pop up.
And sure enough, in the top of the 6th, facing the Party Animals version of a switch hitter, there was one of those strikes.
With the pressure on, he got the third out. Then, in the bottom of the 7th, with a runner on first and the Bananas down by one, Jackson Olson took off on a ball 4 sprint. Then with men on the corners, the former Nationals signee, RAC, was up.
A 3-run homer. As far as we could see, nobody left early. This season, Banana Ball has officially become a league, with two more teams. And they’ll play not just at 17 MLB stadiums, but at three NFL football stadiums as well.
Lesley Stahl: Will you fill those stadiums?
Jesse Cole: They’re sold out.
Lesley Stahl: Already?
Jesse Cole: It’s crazy.
Lesley Stahl: All of it’s crazy.
Some might even say, bananas.
Produced by Shari Finkelstein and Collette Richards. Broadcast associate, Aria Een. Edited by April Wilson.
