Banana Ball!

Our former roommate, groomsman, and good buddy Ryan contacted us weeks ago with an offer: he'd won a chance to purchase Savanah Banana tickets. Would we like ot join him on a particular day? Why, yes, we said. And that day was this past Friday night.

The game was at the Big A, the home of the Angels down in Anaheim, and it was a full house. That picture above doesn't capture how full the place was. Seems like it's not that full that often. 

Anyway: Banana Ball, baby!

If you're unfamiliar with the Savanah Banana brand of baseball, you just need to think of the Harlem Globetrotters for baseball. They put on a show, they play some ball, and everyone has a good time.

There are some rule differences that had me thinking of Futurama's Blernsball game. 

In the barnstorming league there are six teams, and they travel around and play each other in similar circumstances and under the same rules. According to their website, it looks like every game is sold out, which shows that there is an appetite for this kind of game, this Banana Ball.

The teams that play in the Banana Ball Champions League are the titular Savanah Bananas, the Party Animals, the Firefighters, the Texas Tailgaters, the Loco Beach Coconuts, and being resurrected in both name and spirit, the Indianapolis Clowns.

When Corrie was checking the Banana's opponent for our game, she said, "Um...looks like the Bananas are playing...the Red Shoes?" And when we tried to look closer at the image, it seemed like they were clown shoes, maybe?

But I was very excited when it became clear the matchup we got to see was the Bananas versus the Clowns. The OG Clowns were the progenitor to today's Savanah Bananas, played on the Negro League circuit, and employed a teenage Hank Aaron.

The warm-up routines were very exciting and silly, and nearly each half-inning there were competitions and/or dance numbers. And when the baseball game was being played, it was fast-paced. The reason for that is built into the rules.

Baseball is a game, a sport, a 'National Pastime.'

Banana Ball looks like baseball, but it has some major rule changes, some of which make for a more interesting product. To wit...

1. The final score is based on how many innings you win, and to win an inning, you need to score more runs than the opponent.
2. Every infielder must touch the ball on a strikeout before the batter is out, meaning that if they run fast enough, they'll almost surely reach base on a strikeout.
3. THERE IS A TIMER. Once the kid-guest announces, "Start the clock!" in unison with fans who know, a big 2-hour countdown timer starts on the scoreboard and does not stop until the 9th inning. They game will be called over if it's not the 9th by two hours. This wrinkle is better than any pitch-clock. These pitchers get after it.

The inning-winning wrinkle causes some weird moments that halp speed the game. Above, if you look closely, you'll see the first run scored in the game was by the home-tram, the Bananas, in inning 5. Because thge Clowns didn't score in the top half, once that guy came across the plate, that half-inning was over and the top of the 6th started. If all you're trying to do is win innings, it all moves so much faster. 

It was the same thing for the 6th inning above, and for the 7th, when the Clowns scored 4 runs, they were still losing 2-1, because they'd only won the one inning. 

Any bottom-half on an inning can be a walk-off. Pretty cool.

This was a great time, and so much fun, and shows that America and its kids really do have quite an appetite for baseball games. And I could support a Banana Ball extension. Corrie joked that they should shift the narrative to Banana Ball as the thing with the Savanah Banana phenomenon, and maybe she's right.

I mean, they eventually let the guy on stilts pitch, and is anything on a baseball diamond more exciting than that?