Are You Ready For Banana-ball?

Today I received a text that the Savannah Bananas are coming to Nashville next June as part of their tour for Banana-ball. 

Okay, what exactly is Banana-ball?

The Savannah Bananas are a traveling baseball team which began as a collegiate summer baseball league team in Savannah, Georgia. They won three league championships in the Coastal Plains League since 2016. After the 2022 season, the organization folded their collegiate amateur team and changing to a travel team playing banana ball rules.

The Bananas have implemented a number of deviations from standard baseball rules, in use since June 2020 at home exhibition games. Branded as "Banana Ball", these include a two-hour time limit on games, no bunting, batters are not allowed to step out of the batter’s box, no mound visits are allowed, walks are now called sprints, foul balls caught by fans are counted as outs, batters can first base and a one-on-one tiebreaker showdown at the end of the game if it’s tied.

The shift to a year-round Banana Ball schedule gives the team the opportunity to schedule more games both in Savannah and around the country, in order to accommodate more Bananas fans. With 80,000 fans on the Banana Ball waiting list for ticket requests, this gives the Bananas freedom to create a schedule to take care of as many fans as possible.

The Bananas roster will now be made up of all professional players including former Bananas and MLB players. Former major leaguers who have played include Cy Young Award and All-Star pitcher Jake Peavy and World Series champion Jonny Gomes, while Eric Byrnes, an 11-year big leaguer, is head coach in 2022. Legendary catcher Johnny Bench participated as a first base coach for a game in West Palm Beach, Florida.

This past spring, the Bananas traveled to six cities on the “Banana Ball World Tour” and sold out every game. The tour was captured as an ESPN+ original series “Bananaland” that premiered on Aug. 19 on ESPN2. The five-part docuseries takes fans behind the scenes of the Banana Ball tour and airs every Friday on ESPN+ through Sept. 16.

Savannah Bananas will be going 'coast to coast' in 2023 with 33 cities in 21 states.

2023 Banana Ball Schedule

February
17-18 — at West Palm Beach, Florida
22-23 — at Daytona Beach, Florida
25 — Savannah
March
2 — Savannah 
4 — at Jacksonville, Florida
10-11 — Savannah 
13 — Savannah
17 — at Sugar Land, Texas
24-25 — at Montgomery, Alabama
31 — at Scottsdale, Arizona
April
1 — at Peoria, Arizona
6-7 — Savannah
13 — Savannah
15 — Savannah
18 — Savannah
21 — at Charleston, West Virginia
26 — Savannah
29 — at Tampa, Florida
May
5-6 — at Kansas City, Kansas
11 — Savannah
13 — Savannah
15 — Savannah
19 — at Las Vegas
26 — at Oklahoma City
29 — at Tulsa, Oklahoma
June
2 — at Nashville, Tennessee
8-9-10 — Savannah
12 — Savannah
15 — Savannah
17 — Savannah
19 — Savannah
23-24 — at Birmingham, Alabama
30 — at Indianapolis
July
3 — at Akron, Ohio
7-8 — Savannah
12 — at Kannapolis, North Carolina
14 — at Durham, N.C.
17 — Savannah
21-22 — at Rancho Cucamonga, California
25 — at San Jose, California
27 — at Fresno, California
29 — at Sacramento, California
August
3 — Savannah
5 — Savannah
9 — at Trenton, New Jersey
11-12 — at Staten Island, New York
14 — at Hartford, Connecticut
16 — at Brockton, Massachusetts
18 — at Portland, Maine
25 — at Des Moines, Iowa
30 — Savannah
September
1 — Savannah
2 — Savannah
4 — Savannah
8-9 — at Milwaukee, Wisconsin
14 — at Syracuse, N.Y.
16 — at Cooperstown, N.Y.