pc28����

They are the most entertaining baseball team in the world, and they’ve brought their wacky, unpredictable, wildly successful version of the sport — Banana ball — to the home of baseball history in Cooperstown, N.Y.

“Welcome to Bananaland,” a warm voice echoes over the ballpark’s PA system. “This is a no-judgement zone.”

Except the Savannah Bananas, capping off their 2023 world tour at Doubleday Field in mid-September, have been judged — and accepted. They have packed parks across the United States. There are a million people on their waiting list for tickets. And they were honoured with an exhibit at the National Baseball Hall of Fame down the street a night earlier.

“I’ve cried about 47 times so far today. It’s really surreal that we’re here,” Bananas manager Tyler Gillum says, wiping tears as he watched infielder in front of a sold-out crowd for the last time this season. “As a kid when you grow up, you always want to come to Cooperstown. Your heroes are in the Hall of Fame. And now here we are. I’m shocked, I’m speechless.

“Banana Nation is real and it’s hard to hold back the tears.”

Their world tour has yet to expand outside the U.S. — the team played almost 90 games in 33 cities and 20 states this year — so many Canadians have yet to experience Banana Nation and see why it’s become a global phenomenon.

Ryan Kellogg was in that position a year ago. But the 29-year-old pitcher from Whitby soon learned all about the Bananas, founded in 2016 by Jesse Cole, who wears a yellow tuxedo and swears by the mantra “fans first, entertain always.” Home base is in Savannah, Ga., where the team competed in the Coastal Plain League, a summer league made up of U.S. college players, for seven seasons and won back-to-back titles before moving to full-time banana ball tours in 2022.

Banana ball is like baseball in most respects, but follows its own set of rules: There are no walks, a bunt leads to an automatic ejection, winning an inning is worth one point to keep the games close and there’s a two-hour time limit to make them quicker. One fan in the crowd is given a confetti cannon to be launched at any time to challenge a call on the field, and if any fan catches a foul ball, it counts as an out.

It sounded like a pretty good time to Kellogg. He was drafted by the Blue Jays in 2015, he threw a no-hitter at Arizona State, he pitched for Canada at the 2017 World Baseball Classic, and he spent six seasons in the Chicago Cubs organization. But being a Banana is the most fun he has had on a baseball field.

“This summer has been wild,” Kellogg says. “Actually, wild is an understatement.”

Kellogg was brought into the fold to help the Bananas win games against the Party Animals, created by Cole to try to steal games from the hometown team, which they do frequently. The entertainment side of the game would come, they told him.

It started by playing into his heritage as the only Canadian on the team. He pitches in a toque and has brought hockey gloves and a stick to the mound with him. But things escalated quickly.

“I had dressed as Napoleon Dynamite for Halloween in 2014,” Kellogg said. “They told me, ‘Hey, you’re gonna do that again.’ I said, ‘Why?’ They said, ‘Because it would be funny.’ ”

So Kellogg spent weeks practising the famous dance from the 2004 movie in the mirror. He shaved his beard, slicked his hair back and, after pitching a clean sixth inning at a recent game in Philadelphia, ripped off his jersey to reveal a “Vote for Pedro” shirt before replicating the iconic Dynamite dance for more than two minutes.

The video of his first and only solo performance has been viewed more than two million times on the Bananas’ TikTok account, which has six million more followers than the New York Yankees do.

“We’re trying to create never-forget moments,” Kellogg says.

Those moments are everywhere in Cooperstown.

A young baseball player is pulled from the crowd and brought to the plate to hit a ball off a tee. The Party Animals boot the ball around just long enough for the girl to circle the bases, and pandemonium ensued as she crosses home plate and is hoisted in the air by her new Bananas teammates.

Players hand out yellow roses in the crowd after the second inning. Kellogg gently places one in the hands of a three-year old girl from Albany, N.Y.

“We keep telling her that her boyfriend is a Savannah Banana,” jokes Nicole Paré, the girl’s mother. She came to the game with her husband and two children so they could see how fun baseball can be.

Kids are a major focal point of the show. So, too, are choreographed team celebrations, shirtless belly bump races and dancing Banana Nanas. But in the middle of the chaos, there is also baseball being played that reminds everyone in attendance that these are real baseball players competing in a real game, something the team believes sets it apart from scripted sports shows like the Harlem Globetrotters.

“You can’t script a home run. You can’t script a double,” Kellogg says. “We find ways to celebrate the things they celebrate in baseball, except bigger.”

Fans chant the name of Noah Bridges, an internet sensation known for his on-field lip-synching, after he hits a fourth-inning home run over the same fence baseball legends Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams and Hank Aaron cleared in decades past.

David Meadows, the slick centre-fielder whose backflip catches have reached sports highlight shows everywhere, mistimes his jump on a fly ball in the seventh, letting what could have been a routine out drop for a single. The next pitch is hit his way and Meadows tries the backflip catch again. He nails it.

“To come out here and put smiles on all these fans’ faces is more than wins and losses,” he says.

Hall of Famer Lee Smith, one of the greatest relievers in MLB history, emerges from the Bananas dugout in the eighth to throw a strike down the middle, and another olive branch from baseball’s past. He’s far from the first to do it: Bill (Spaceman) Lee, Johnny Damon, Dee Gordon, Hunter Pence and many more former major-leaguers have suited up in Banana yellow.

“I’ve been a baseball fan for about 60 years, and I think this is great,” says Bill Hudson, an employee at the Baseball Hall working as an usher at the game. “A great atmosphere, great for the fans, and it’s brought a lot of energy to the Hall of Fame, too. I’ve never seen the place packed like this.”

The Bananas, who have packed minor-league stadiums all year, lose their tour finale to the Party Animals and drop the season series 34-33. Still, the players head outside the red gates of Doubleday Field to sign autographs, take selfies and say hello to the people who have flocked to see them.

“The fans here aren’t just invested in our careers, but in us as people,” Kellogg says.

The Bananas will announce their 2024 tour schedule on Oct. 5, which is expected to include major-league stadiums for the first time next year to try to keep up with the growing demand. But don’t expect Canada to be in those plans — yet.

“We’d love to get up there. We’re interested in a certain major-league ballpark but haven’t had those talks yet,” Cole says, smirking. “It may not happen next season, but we hope it would work out the season after that.”

If Banana Nation does arrive in Toronto, the fans will come in bunches. As Cole says in his final address to the people of Bananaland who have crammed into Cooperstown for one magical weekend: “This is only the beginning.”