What exactly are the Savannah Bananas becoming?

The Bananas started as baseball’s most eccentric attraction. Now they are building something that increasingly resembles a traveling entertainment universe of their own

The Savannah Bananas brand has, arguably, become bigger than the Savannah Bananas themselves. What would seem to be a crucial component of the Bananas experience – the actual team – is increasingly absent from games featuring the showboating version of baseball that the Bananas themselves popularized. By all accounts, however, fans don’t care.

When the Guardian last examined the Bananas in 2023, the organization had only just abandoned its amateur roots in collegiate summer baseball to focus strictly on “bananaball”, a funhouse-mirror reflection of baseball that focuses on trick plays, player antics and crowd engagement. At the time, bananaball was restricted to two teams – the Bananas and their forever foes, the Party Animals – who seemed prepared to follow a well-trodden path to long-term, if moderate success.