Is Banana Ball good for baseball?

Gina’s Pick: Keeping baseball fun.

Baseball is widely known as America’s pastime and one of the most popular sports, yet many consider it to be boring.

Banana Ball is putting a new spin on the sport in an attempt to change that scope and keep baseball fun.

The Banana Ball Championship League, founded in 2023, is an exhibition league based in Savannah, Georgia. Their mission is to deliver a brand of baseball that prioritizes fun and fan entertainment over the outcome of the game itself.

The league has expanded and will have six teams for the 2026 season: the Savannah Bananas, Party Animals, Firefighters, Texas Tailgaters and now the Indianapolis Clowns and Loco Beach Coconuts.

Banana Ball has a unique set of rules that make the game interesting.

One major difference from traditional baseball is the two-hour time limit, where no inning can start after the one-hour and 50-minute mark, unless the game is tied. This is to ensure a fast-paced environment since one of the critiques of baseball is that the game is generally slow.

Other rules include: teams receive points for winning innings instead of runs scored, and fans can catch foul balls for outs, which is a great way to keep fans engaged. There are also no walks or stepping out of the batter’s box, no mound visits and more.

Banana Ball players, umpires and coaches are frequently seen online dancing to music and engaging in trick plays on the field during games. Teams consist of baseball players, as well as entertainers.

They do things fans would never see from Major League Baseball.

This season, the Bananas took their show on the road for the Banana Ball World Tour, where they hit a record of 17 MLB and three NFL stadiums on their trip.

In April 2025, they played in front of the biggest crowd in the league’s history, with 81,000 fans at Clemson Memorial Stadium.

Banana Ball has absolutely taken fans by storm, going viral online and has definitely been good for the game.

For those who already love the game of baseball, this is truly the ultimate fan experience.

Jacob’s Pick: Solid idea, taken too far.

The Savannah Bananas started as an experiment. A challenge to the gradually slowing pace of Major League Baseball games. However, they have overstayed their welcome.

One of the most popular selling points of Banana Ball is that its games are significantly shorter than Major League Baseball’s. However, with MLB adding the pitch clock in 2023 and cutting half an hour off of their games, this is no longer an issue.

After two seasons of functioning as a normal collegiate summer league team, Banana Ball was invented in 2018 with such rules as every inning counts, no walks, no bunting and a two-hour time limit.

The team played its first game under Banana Ball rules in June of 2020 after two years of intra-squad scrimmages. This is when the Savannah Party Animals debuted. They served as a more competent Washington Generals to the Bananas’ Harlem Globetrotters, occasionally defeating them in games.

As the Bananas grew more popular, they felt less need to play actual baseball games and dissolved their collegiate summer league team in 2022. This was their first step towards taking things too far.

It has felt like the Bananas are more of a traveling circus intent on making a mockery of baseball as opposed to improving it.

One of the most beautiful things about baseball is that there is no clock. A team can be down 10-0 in the bottom of the ninth inning with two outs and storm back to win the game.

This can’t happen in Banana Ball, not only because the two-hour time limit would never allow a game to reach the ninth, but because of the rule where every inning is scored as one point, a team wins the game automatically by outscoring their opponent in five of the nine innings.

Banana Ball also appeals to some of the worst aspects of the current generation. By deriding baseball as “too boring” and trussing it up with needless flash and pizzazz, they are leaning into society’s dwindling attention spans and almost encouraging them.

The other element that Banana Ball embraces too much is the shameless need for clicks and attention on social media. By trying to make every moment viral, they are feeding the monster, so to speak.

The Savannah Bananas were a good attempt at changing baseball at a time when it probably needed to be changed. The pitch clock in MLB was absolutely a necessity to speed things along. But their popularity, which could overtake traditional baseball, is dangerous for the future of the game.

Gina Scarpa is a second-year majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact her, please email gfs5427@psu.edu.

Jacob Petrarca is a fourth-year student majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, please email jap6840@psu.edu