Making Baseball Fun Again - The Savannah Bananas
If you are anywhere in or around baseball twitter, you have seen occasional clips of obscure rules or WWE style walk-ups from the Bananas baseball team. The Sox played a day game yesterday, so I decided it was time to check out a full game and see if it lived up to the hype, and boy oh boy did it live up to my expectations.
For those that may not know, the Savannah Bananas play in an independent baseball league and is more of a competition to see who can have the most fun than it is a baseball game. I can only assume the guys who invented it had just finished reading about Doc Ellis' no-hitter on acid and said "this gives me an idea." Here are the rules that differ from the baseball we are used to:
My personal favorite rule is rule 6. The batter definitely has the advantage in this one. Every "walk" I saw ended with the runner at second, but it was actually a fairly close play every time. Again though, the rules of the game come secondary to how these guys play baseball. Someone brought a caddy wielding a full golf bag up to the plate, and proceeded to tee up and smoke a powder golf ball before his at-bat: https://twitter.com/TheSavBananas/status/1512969384712617988?s=20&t=ift8jKmR7M1pzGuWKQxUkQ
90% of the jerseys have no sleeves, there is some fucked up promotion going on in between every half-inning, and everyone gets in on the action. For example, in the second inning, the ump got down and fucked home plate missionary to clean it off while Pop Smoke was playing over the speakers, and this was within 30 seconds of me turning it on so I knew I was in for a treat. I tried to write down all of the absurd shit I saw as it was happening -
The ump blew a call so the third baseman pulled a squirt gun out of his back pocket and sprayed him with it
A batter lit his bat on fire before his at-bat and still somehow managed to get a single
A pitcher played in overalls and pulled them down before one of his pitches and was wearing tighty-whiteys
In between the fourth and the fifth inning, they did a banana toss where a fan had to catch as many bananas in his pants as he could in 60 seconds that were being thrown from the stands. As you can imagine, he got absolutely smoked right in the dick
Bill "Spaceman" Lee came in and threw a 1-2-3 inning in a minute and 55 seconds. Lee is 75 years old and pitched for the Sox in the '75 World Series
The Showtime Lakers had their Lakers Girls dance team. The Savannah Bananas have their Banana Nanas. A group of GILFs that get out there and do jazzercise while the whole stadium watches and collectively try to pick their jaws up off the floor. And you know they're taking their pick of the players behind the bleachers and taking their dentures out for them. I mean look at these sexy little minxes
That isn't even half the absurdity that went down. The best part is, the baseball being played is actually pretty good! These guys are mostly DI baseball players that have fully embraced the wild rules and that makes it all the more fun to watch.
My only real problem with it was the announcing. They brought a fucking 12 year old into the booth, and the play-by-play guy was treating this like it was game 7 of the World Series. They need someone like Jim Ross or Pat McAfee calling these games. Part of the problem is the game is on ESPN+, so they can't get crazy, but an unfiltered broadcast would have made the Savannah Bananas a 10/10 experience. Instead, I give it a 9.4/10. I highly recommend throwing this on at the pregame before going out on Saturday nights.