CLEMSON – There was a dance party for 81,000 people on April 26 in a football stadium with a sideshow of baseball.
The Savannah Bananas, known as the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball, brought their traveling circus known as Banana Ball to Clemson’s Memorial Stadium and thoroughly entertained.
Two days after Clemson’s spring football game on April 5, the stadium was transformed to a baseball field just for the Bananas.
Tickets sold out in three hours months ago. Parking lots were full of tailgaters early in the afternoon for a 7 p.m. start. When the gates opened at 4:30 p.m., people were lined up by the thousands to watch all of the pregame festivities.
The Bananas, who have become somewhat of a national phenomenon, have played in Major League Baseball stadiums. But this was next level.
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Savannah beat their dance partner rivals, the pink Party Animals, 4-3. Not many in attendance likely knew how the unique scoring was being kept, and fewer cared. A foul ball caught by a fan was counted as one of the last two outs of the game.
Savannah Bananas would make P.T. Barnum proud
This was just for fun – and it was pure joy during the two-hour game. Exactly two hours, in fact. The Bananas have a time limit and the minutes, even seconds, were ticking down on the scoreboard.
Bananas owner Jesse Cole, a former pitcher at Wofford, shockingly said during his time with the Terriers that he thought baseball was boring.
He fixed that in a way that would have made P.T. Barnum proud.
Clemson athletics director Graham Neff didn’t want to miss a minute, either. He literally ran from a trip to the men’s room back to his seat in the press box.
How Clemson football made cameo appearances at Banana Ball
The Bananas paid tribute to Clemson throughout the show.
After warmups, they did something the Tigers always do. They loaded buses on the west side of the stadium and rolled around with a police escort to the west end zone, where Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney led the Bananas from Howard’s Rock as they raced down the hill and onto the field.
C.J. Spiller, a Clemson Hall of Famer and former NFL running back who now coaches that position for the Tigers, came out in a yellow Bananas uniform and helped them in a dance celebration at home plate after a home run.
Bananas player Jackson Olson wore a Clemson baseball cap.
There was a dizzy bat contest, but the twist was that competitors were dressed as Tigers mascots, and they raced to get pies in the face. That was called Pie of the Tiger.
Members of Clemson’s marching band came out and joined the Banana Band for a halftime show.
Videos of Clemson football highlights were shown, including the pass from Deshaun Watson to Hunter Renfrow to beat Alabama for the 2016 national championship.
IMPACT ON CLEMSON BASEBALL: How Savannah Bananas inspired Clemson to make baseball games more fun
After the game, and before a tremendous fireworks display, Cole thanked the crowd.
“You just made our dreams come true,” he said,
The Bananas made some dreams come true as well.
Todd Shanesy covers high school athletics for the Greenville News, Spartanburg Herald-Journal and Anderson Independent Mail in the USA TODAY Network. Contact him by email at [email protected]. Follow him on X, formerly called Twitter, at @ToddShanesySHJ.
