While TBS broadcasts MLB Division Series action this weekend, its sister channel TruTV is carrying another form of postseason baseball: the first Banana Ball Tour Championship.
Three seasons after devoting themselves to the newly created sport of Banana Ball, the Savannah Bananas now have competition, with plans to launch a six-team Banana Ball Championship League next year. A four-team tourney starting Thursday will serve as a testing ground prior to that debut, including for a new rule that will make trick plays count for points for the first time. It’s the latest effort to demonstrate Banana-tinted events are more competitive than the WWE or Harlem Globetrotters-esque scripted exhibitions they’ve been compared to.
Is October baseball ready for a new dose of silly?
The semis will air on TruTV Thursday through Sunday, with the final on Oct. 11 at Savannah’s Grayson Stadium, the same day TBS could have a pair of NLDS Game 5s. The Banana games, produced by an in-house media arm, will also air for free on YouTube.
Retired MLB outfielder Curtis Granderson will be covering the MLB playoffs from TNT Sports’ studio, but he said one of the place’s many screens will be dedicated to Banana Ball when the games are on. In an increasingly crowded sports month, the lighthearted newcomer will help baseball keep its grip on the public consciousness.
“There’s just so much baseball,” Granderson said in an interview. “The timing of it couldn’t be any better.”
The Savannah Bananas have built a following of more than 30 million across social media, largely thanks to a stream of hijinks, including celebrity cameos and full-team dances. But founder Jesse Cole has always had larger ambitions.
“We are not the Globetrotters,” he said this summer. “We’re building a sport.”
While MLB will always have the best baseball players, he wants Banana Ball to be home to its most entertaining competitors. Winning an inning is worth one point in the sport’s rules, until the ninth when every score counts. Now, if the visiting team tallies more trick plays through the eighth inning, they’ll get an additional point heading into the ninth.
There will still be celebrations and viral moments—maybe even a guest appearance or two—during postseason play, Cole said, but likely not as many as with regular-season events.
“If we had Banana Ball just stand alone, I believe it’s a superior product,” Cole said. “If we were to have no dancing, no walk-ups, no celebrations, playing Banana Ball with the trick plays and the fans catching foul balls and you can have walk-offs in every inning—I think Banana Ball alone is a great product. I think we’re going to focus on that.”
Once the league launches, Cole intends to inject playoff stakes at different times of the year, rather than waiting for October. Banana Ball is not meant to steal eyeballs from MLB, but rather to attract a crowd interested in a more entertainment-driven sports product.
“It doesn’t have to be Banana Ball versus MLB—it’s a whole different style of ball,” TNT game analyst (and former Bananas guest hitter) Jeff Francoeur said in an interview. “I was at a 5-year-old’s T-ball game and I saw four Banana bats being used. That goes to show you … what Banana Ball can really do is help develop a love for the game at a young age.”
Major League Baseball has had one of its stronger seasons in recent memory alongside the Savannah Bananas’s growth, with more than 71 million fans attending games and strong viewership numbers across its TV partners. TNT Sports averaged 462,000 viewers for its non-exclusive MLB games, up 29%.
“In a day and age of all this serious stuff—to me TNT is giving you an opportunity,” Francoeur said. “Watch the greatest teams play but also watch something that’s so much fun and that is great for kids too.”
