Kerin Vadnais and her family drove from Rochester, Vermont, to Portland to see the Savannah Bananas play at Hadlock Field on Friday night. Vadnais saw the Bananas play in Savannah and Nashville, and Monday in Hartford, Connecticut. Next month, she’ll travel to Cooperstown, New York, to see the Bananas. A lifelong Boston Red Sox fan, Vadnais said the Bananas are exactly what baseball needs right now.
“It brings the fun back to baseball. Baseball, in my opinion, was getting stale,” Vadnais said. “It’s so important to bring baseball to people who might not like it or see it otherwise.”
Dakota Albritton of the The Savannah Bananas signs a poster for Kerin Vadnais. Vadnais of Rochester, Vermont, said she has seen the team play in five cities. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
Friday night’s game between the Bananas and their regular opponent, the Party Animals, was the first of a pair of sold-out games the team has scheduled for Hadlock Field this weekend while the Portland Sea Dogs are on the road.
The Bananas call their brand of baseball “Banana Ball.” Games include dancing, a lot of dancing, and the team uses modified rules meant to speed things up and keep things interesting. For example, the batter cannot step out of the batter’s box. If he does, it’s an automatic strike. A hitter who bunts is ejected from the game. There are no walks. If a pitcher throws ball four, the batter can take off running while every defensive player in the field must touch the ball before it becomes live. The batter can go for as many bases as he wants. Mound visits are not allowed, and if a fan catches a foul ball cleanly, the batter is out.
Each game is played under a strict two-hour time limit. The rules are not hard to remember, said Dakota McFadden, now in his third year with the Bananas.
“It was actually a pretty easy adjustment. Guys are still executing pitches. Guys are still having good at-bats in the box. At the end of the day, you still have to play the game very well,” McFadden said. “No matter win, lose or draw, everyone has a great experience.”
McFadden’s uniform is covered in the autographs he’s gotten from fans throughout the season.
“I figured we sign so many autographs for fans, I wanted to give some payback and let them sign the uniform. Everybody’s eyes light up and they get happy as soon as I ask them to sign me,” he said.
Dakota Albritton grew up in Ellaville, Georgia and graduated high school in 2019. Three years ago, he heard the Bananas were having tryouts, and they asked players to bring their weird talents as well as their baseball ability. Albritton brought his stilts.
“Jesse Cole (team owner) asked me if I could hit a ball on them. I said yeah, and I’ve been barreling baseballs 10 feet in the air ever since,” Albritton said. “I’ve got a better swing on the stilts than I ever had coming up through ball. The stilts force me to stay back, be patient, and let the ball get to me.”
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The back of Albritton’s jersey doesn’t bear his name. It just says Stilts. He loves it.
“There’s nothing in this world that makes me more happy than to see kids smiling when they walk up to me, look up to me, call me Mr. Stilts. Seeing the fun being brought back into the game is the best feeling in the world,” Albritton said. “There’s kids out there who worry about striking out. They get too uptight, and they play the game too seriously. Them getting to watch us play at a very high level and seeing us having so much fun, we’re hoping it will rub off on them and the next time they hit the diamond they have 10 times more fun.”
DR Meadows of Savannah Bananas delivers a pitch while being thrown into the air by teammates Jackson Olson and pitcher Kyle Luigs, right. The pitch from Meadows, an outfielder, was a ball. Ben McCanna/Staff Photographer
Kyle Luigs, Savannah’s starting pitcher Friday, pitches in a yellow cowboy hat instead of a baseball cap, because why not? When he was playing college baseball, first at the University of North Georgia before a graduate year at Jacksonville State, he hoped to find a way to stay in baseball.
“I have the coolest job in the world. It’s really been cool, all the places we’ve gone to. A lot of places I would never get to travel to,” Luigs said. “We’re doing away with all the boring stuff people don’t like and making it exciting. It’s definitely real baseball. The guys on that side are really good, and we’re really good.”
The Bananas and Party Animals dance, a lot. They dance after home runs. They run on to the field and dance after doubles. They dance in front of the dugout and behind the mound between innings. The Bananas wander through the crowd during the game, handing out flowers and high-fives.
It’s a party with a baseball game playing in the background. It’s all about creating a fun fan experience, and it’s just what Vadnais was looking for a few years ago. A critical care nurse, she was struggling through the worst days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I found the Bananas, and they brought some much needed joy into the world,” Vadnais said.
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