SI

Buccaneers Stadium Looked So Strange Hosting Savannah Bananas Baseball Game

Josh Wilson|
Raymond James Stadium hosting the Savannah Bananas baseball team
Raymond James Stadium hosting the Savannah Bananas baseball team | @TheSavBananas on X

In this story:

Tampa Bay Buccaneers

The Savannah Bananas interest has officially reached a new level. The team that plays 'Banana Ball' which the organization describes as the "fastest and most entertaining game of baseball," played Saturday night in Tampa Bay at Raymond James Stadium, best known as home of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.

That made for one of the most obscure field dimensions with home plate placed in a corner and no temporary walls placed in the outfield.

Good luck even flirting with a left-center-field outside-the-park home run here.

The Bananas also shared a time lapse video of the grounds crew getting the stadium ready.

It was the team's first-ever game at an NFL stadium, and it was a sellout. The venue was actually not originally on the schedule for the Bananas, with the team slated to play its Tampa games at Tropicana Field. After the Trop suffered severe damage from Hurricane Milton, the Bananas moved things over to the NFL stadium in the area instead.

The Rays, meanwhile, will play their home games this season at George M. Steinbrenner field, the spring training home of the Yankees. Presumably it would have been tough to schedule the Bananas there in the home stretch of MLB spring training, making Raymond James Stadium a good alternative.

The Bananas, who call Savannah, Georgia, home, barnstorm across the country and have become a viral sensation over the last several years, primarily geared as an entertainment team toward young kids and families.

More Baseball on Sports Illustrated

Published
Josh Wilson
JOSH WILSON

Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.

Share on XFollow J_WilsonSports
Home/NFL