Overdrawn in Savannah: How the Bananas Bet Everything and Won

In January 2016, Jesse and Emily Cole looked at their team's bank account and saw a negative number. The team had not played a single game. It had barely sold a ticket. Opening night was months away, and the money was already gone.

So they sold their house.

That part of the Savannah Bananas story rarely makes the highlight reels. Before the yellow tuxedo, the dancing umpire and the sellouts in other teams' stadiums, there was a young couple deciding that a summer baseball team was worth more than the roof over their heads. And this was in a city that had just stopped caring about baseball.

A tough room

The Coles arrived in Savannah in October 2015 with a college summer-league team and a home field at Historic Grayson Stadium. Their timing was terrible. The city's minor league club had just left town, ending roughly 90 years of minor league baseball in Savannah.

That loss shaped everything. Fans who had spent generations watching pro prospects were now being asked to get excited about college players on summer break. Most of them passed.

Ticket sales in those first months were close to zero. By the new year the account was overdrawn. The sensible move was to fold. The Coles kept going without a safety net.

The name everyone hated

On February 25, 2016, the team finally had a name: the Savannah Bananas.

Savannah did not take it well. Plenty of locals thought it made the city look silly. Some told the owners flatly that nobody would ever pay to watch a team called the Bananas.

The rest of the country took it very differently. The name was covered by CBS, NBC and Sports Illustrated, and SportsCenter named it the logo of the year. A team that couldn't get its own city's attention suddenly had the nation's.

That was the bet. A safe name would have been forgotten by lunch. A ridiculous one guaranteed people would talk about it, even if most of the talk was complaining. For a team with no money and no fans, being mocked beat being ignored.

Opening night

Whatever people thought of the name, they came to see it for themselves. Opening night in 2016 sold out.

The crowd walked into Grayson Stadium expecting a summer-league game and got something closer to a variety show. Food was included in the ticket, as much as anyone could eat. A dance team of senior citizens took the field. The players danced too. And one lucky infant became the first Banana Baby, honored in a pregame ceremony that would turn into a nightly ritual.

It was strange. It was also a great night out, and people told their friends. The Bananas have sold out every game since.

Fans first, baseball second

Read quickly, the Bananas look like a list of stunts. A dancing umpire, Vincent Chapman. A breakdancing first base coach, Maceo Harrison. Dakota "Stilts" Albritton, a player who stands 10 feet tall on stilts. Jesse Cole in a yellow tuxedo, every day, without exception.

The cast keeps going. There are the Banana Nanas, a senior dance team, the Man-Nanas, a dad-bod cheerleading squad, and the Banana Splitz, a youth dance troupe.

Every one of those acts grows from the same root. The people in the seats come before the traditions on the field. Much of baseball's slow pace exists simply because it always has. The Bananas asked what fans would actually miss, cut the rest and filled the gaps with things worth watching.

That thinking happened to fit the internet perfectly. Choreographed dances and theatrical walk-ups gave fans something to film every night. A pre-pitch dance routine in the third inning of every game has piled up hundreds of millions of views on TikTok by itself.

The baseball held up as well. Over seven seasons in the Coastal Plain League, a summer circuit for college players, the Bananas won three Petitt Cup championships. More than 35 of their players were drafted.

The Coles also built something off the field. Emily Cole leads Bananas Foster, a nonprofit that supports the foster care community.

Walking away from the league

By 2022 the Bananas had a winning team, a full stadium every night and a secure spot in an established league. They gave up the spot.

The Coles pulled the team out of the Coastal Plain League to play Banana Ball full-time. It's their own version of the sport, rebuilt from the ground up to move faster and entertain more.

It was the same move as the name, made at a much larger scale. Leaving meant no standings, no conference and no familiar structure to lean on. It also meant nobody could tell them what baseball was supposed to look like anymore.

From one team to a league

The Bananas now share the bill with five other teams under their parent company, Fans First Entertainment. The Party Animals, Firefighters, Texas Tailgaters, Loco Beach Coconuts and Indianapolis Clowns make up the rest of the Banana Ball Championship League.

The newest name carries real history. The original Indianapolis Clowns were a famous barnstorming team from the Negro Leagues, and the plan to revive them grew out of a 2022 visit to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum.

Three numbers show how far the idea has traveled. About 2 million fans saw Banana Ball in 2025. The 2026 schedule, the league's first official season, covered 75 stadiums in 45 states, including 14 MLB ballparks and 10 football stadiums. The target was 3.2 million fans, with the season closing in a championship Banana Bowl on October 10, 2026.

Back to the house

Ten years ago, the Coles sold their home to keep a summer team alive in a city that didn't want it. This season their game was booked into major league ballparks and football stadiums across the country.

The house is long gone. Selling it may go down as the best trade in modern baseball.