Banana Ball by Jesse Cole & Don Yaeger
The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas
Released: May 16, 2023 | Genre: Nonfiction, Sports
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The Savannah Bananas have peeled back the game of baseball and made it fun again.
This is their story.
For his entire childhood, Jesse Cole dreamed of pitching in the Majors. Now, he has a life in baseball that only he could have imagined: he met the love of his life in the industry; they shaped Savannah, Georgia's professional team into the league champion Savannah Bananas; and now the Bananas have restyled baseball itself into something all their own: Banana Ball.
Fast, fun, and outrageously entertaining, Banana Ball brings fans right into the game. The Bananas throw out a first banana rather than a ball. Their first-base coach dances to Thriller or Britney between innings. Players run into the crowd to hand out roses. The ticket is food all-inclusive! And the rules themselves are bananas: if a fan catches a foul ball it's an out, and players might go to bat on stilts, or wearing a banana costume. And their fans absolutely love it.
But the reason this team is on the forefront of a movement is less about the play on the field and more about the atmosphere that the team culture creates. For the first time in this book, Jesse reveals the ideas and experiences that allowed him to reimagine America's oldest sport by creating a phenomenon that is helping fans fall in love with the game all over again.
This is a story that's bigger than baseball, and bigger than the yellow tuxedo Jesse wears as the "ringmaster" of every game. And to understand the movement, you have to understand the story at its core. In Jesse's telling, it takes heart, creativity, joy (and a bit of tropical fruit) to make something wholly original out of one of America's great traditions. His story is part Moneyball, part Field of Dreams, part The Greatest Showman. It is a personal story, a creativity story, and the story of a business scrapping for every success. And it has several distinct love stories--love stories like Jesse and his father, Jesse and his wife, the team and the sport of baseball, the team and the fans.
This is Jesse calling his dad from the outfield after each Bananas game, and putting unending creativity into a team with the ultimate goal of bringing the Bananas to the professional ballparks he himself never got to play in. This is his story, of baseball, love, leadership, and going just a bit bananas for all.
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Jesse Cole’s iconic yellow tuxedo was inspired by Walt Disney and circus showman P. T. Barnum. Cole wanted to stand out and signal that Savannah Bananas games were about entertainment as much as baseball. His reasoning was that if the owner is wearing a bright yellow tuxedo, everyone gets permission to stop taking themselves so seriously.
REVIEW
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ☆ ☆
Just watch the documentary. 🍌⚾️
This book could’ve been much better if it didn’t feel like half of it was Jesse Cole’s autobiography. While that’s not entirely surprising, as Banana Ball is still a relatively new phenomenon with limited history, it does mean a good portion of the book is spent recounting the life of its creator rather than diving deep into the sport itself.
In an unusual twist, the ESPN documentary series actually provides more insight into Banana Ball than this book does. Typically, it’s the book that goes deeper than the film or series, but here, the opposite is true. To be fair, the two projects aren’t connected, but if you’ve seen the doc, you’ve already heard most of what the book has to offer. The only real “new” info is the team’s decision to leave the Coastal Plain League and go all-in on Banana Ball. A cool detail, but likely included just because the book came out after that decision.
Ironically, the best part of the entire book comes before it even starts: in the author’s foreword. Co-author Don Yaeger shares that, as part of the writing process, he attended every single Banana Ball game in 2022. He talks about how social media clips, as entertaining as they are, can’t capture the full experience. The live games are even zanier, wilder, and more joyfully chaotic than anything he’d seen on a baseball field.
He recounts taking his son to a game, and after all the fun and madness, his son turned to him and said: “Dad, please don’t take me to a regular baseball game ever again.”
That moment alone captures what Banana Ball is really about, something the book only occasionally manages to tap into.
