Banana Ball Fan Has 59 Tattoos From Players and Cast

There are Banana Ball fans.

There are really serious Banana Ball fans.

And then there is Nicole Wisniewski.

I’ve seen Nicole around Banana Ball enough that I started calling her “Tattoo Girl.” Thankfully, she seems to like it. During our conversation, we briefly considered “Tattoo Legend,” which, considering the numbers involved here, might actually be more accurate.

Nicole is 27, lives in Bridgeview, Illinois, and currently has 59 tattoos that came from Banana Ball players and personalities.

Not 59 tattoos total. Fifty-nine Banana Ball tattoos.

She counted them before we talked: 36 on her left arm and 23 on her right leg. Add another 12 tattoos unrelated to Banana Ball and we're talking about somebody who has become pretty familiar with a tattoo chair.

The funny part?

None of this was really planned.

It started with a blank book

Nicole had some blank books sitting around and wasn't sure what to do with them.

So she asked her mom, Marlene.

Her mom suggested having a Banana Ball player draw something and maybe turning the drawing into a tattoo.

Nicole already had tattoos, so the idea wasn't completely crazy.

She figured she might get one or two.

That estimate missed by approximately 57.

The process today is pretty simple.

Nicole hands the book to players or cast members and lets them draw or write something. Then she takes the original artwork to her tattoo artist and has it reproduced.

And there's an important rule:

Don't fix the drawing.

If the player made the line crooked, the tattoo stays crooked. If the drawing is weird, the tattoo stays weird.

The imperfection is part of the point.

Nicole told me about one drawing with particularly difficult zigzagging lines. Her tattoo artist understandably wanted something straighter.

Nope.

She wanted it exactly the way the player drew it.

That might be my favorite detail about this entire thing.

These aren't polished Banana Ball logos Nicole found online.

They're little pieces of original artwork created by the people she's met along the way.

“Daddy Lace” actually made the cut

Then there is Logan Lacey.

Lacey apparently didn't think Nicole would actually tattoo his contribution.

It said:

Daddy Lace.

Nicole wasn't initially convinced either.

Then she essentially decided:

Challenge accepted.

The next time Lacey saw her, she'd gotten it.

Nicole told me she captured his reaction when he realized she'd actually done it. He started pulling other players over to look.

And somehow “Daddy Lace” has become one of her favorite tattoos.

Banana Ball is a strange and wonderful place.

She also has a donut drawn by Armando Becerra.

She has a “Book It” tattoo from Brett Loftis.

And players have started becoming familiar enough with Nicole's collection that they'll ask whether their artwork made the cut.

One player who hadn't made it asked for another chance.

Another wanted to know where his tattoo was.

At some point, the project flipped.

Nicole isn't simply asking Banana Ball players to participate anymore.

Banana Ball players want to make Nicole's collection.

One tattoo means something completely different

Not every tattoo is funny.

Firefighters head coach Val Perez wrote Nicole a message rather than simply drawing something.

One part stayed with Nicole:

“You are always enough.”

She had those words tattooed on her leg.

And that's when this story becomes about something more than somebody getting a bunch of unusual tattoos.

Because Banana Ball has changed Nicole in ways that aren't nearly as obvious as the ink.

Banana Ball brought out a different Nicole

Nicole told me she's been shy essentially her entire life.

She's a homebody. She didn't grow up constantly going out. Her social circle was relatively small.

Her first Banana Ball game was at Grayson Stadium on May 30, 2024, after she'd discovered players including Jackson Olson and Ryan Cox through social media and started watching games online.

She wanted to see the real thing.

When she finally did, there was almost too much to watch.

A pitch is happening. Somebody else is dancing. Something is happening on the other side of the stadium.

Where are you supposed to look?

Nicole loved it.

Meeting the players was another story.

She was nervous.

Her mother encouraged her to go talk to them, and Austin Krzeminski became the first Banana Ball player Nicole remembers meeting.

Then something interesting started happening.

The quiet person wasn't quite so quiet anymore.

Nicole described herself to me as an introvert almost everywhere else—but an extrovert inside Banana Ball.

I asked her why.

Her answer stuck with me.

“I can be myself in Banana Land.”

That's truly the real story, without a doubt!

Her sister sees it, too

Nicole's sister, Melissa Wisniewski, happened to be nearby while we were talking, so I asked her to join our conversation.

That turned out to be useful because Melissa has watched the change herself.

She described Nicole as quiet and very much a homebody.

Banana Ball is very different.

Melissa called it Nicole's chance to “shine” and told me something else that probably explains the entire collection better than I can:

“That is like her place.”

That's quite a statement from somebody who has known Nicole her entire life.

And the change isn't limited to her family noticing it.

Nicole has met people through Banana Ball who have become close friends.

She told me about meeting Amber through TikTok before eventually meeting her in person at a Banana Ball event—despite living only about 20 minutes apart back home.

Another Banana Ball friendship with Kristen became so close so quickly that a player asked whether they were sisters.

They weren't.

They had met in person roughly a month earlier.

Now other fans recognize her

Something even stranger has happened.

Nicole has become recognizable herself.

Fans approach her at games because they've seen the tattoos or her social media.

One fan even asked a Banana Ball personality to create a tattoo drawing because, according to Nicole, Nicole had inspired her to do it.

That caught Nicole off guard.

By the way, I thought it was completely awesome!

For someone who spent much of her life considering herself shy, being told she's an inspiration to somebody else is a pretty significant turn.

“I've grown a lot out of my shell since finding Banana Ball,” she told me.

And that is why I think calling Nicole “the fan with 59 Banana Ball tattoos” doesn't quite tell the story.

The tattoos got my attention.

The person behind them kept it.

She's accumulated around 35 jerseys. She's traveled around the country for games. She's made friends she wouldn't otherwise have met. Players now recognize her. Other fans recognize her.

And she told me she's considering getting a total of 100 Banana Ball tattoos.

When I asked whether she planned to continue, her answer wasn't particularly ambiguous.

Yes.

In fact, she was already looking for another blank book.

Apparently 59 is just a checkpoint.

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