Savannah Bananas Tickets Are Expensive on the Secondary Market...and Still WORTH IT!

The Savannah Bananas are saving our childhood love of sports.

The Savannah Bananas played the Texas Tailgatersfor a second time at Great American Ballpark on Saturday June 14, 2025. The game included music, dancing, baby races, father and son catch and plenty of back flips. The Bananas played to a crowd of around 42,000 people both nights. / Phil Didion/The Enquirer / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

We live in an era of sports where millionaires and billionaires squabble over money the rest of us will never truly fathom. This is also a time when the most highly tuned and skilled athletes performatively act out illegal contact with the believability of an 8-year-old me in my off-Broadway debut as a flying monkey in Naples Park Elementary’s Wizard of Oz in 1988. I went for it, I leaped around, I flailed, I fell to the ground, I rolled around—but the difference was, when I got back up, I was filled with pride and the audience applauded.

We’re also in an age where the preposterous dilemma from Major League 2—where Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn became a star, protected his image, and focused only on long-term earnings and legacy—has become reality. And we’ve reached a point where press conferences are filled with player after player, coach after coach, showing off the ability to speak without ever actually saying a thing.

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Sports today are more analytical, more algorithmic, more measured, more antiseptic—it’s more everything except fun. In 1967, an NBA rival was born: the ABA. They spotted a gap in the NBA’s model—fun and excitement—and filled it with a red, white, and blue ball, a three-point line, faster play, and rim-shaking dunks. When the NBA and ABA merged, the league was forever changed. Today, you probably don’t notice it beyond the fact that the NBA now features the tallest, most athletic players all standing 30 feet from the hoop, launching a record number of threes—each year more than the last.

So, we’ve diagnosed the illness. What’s the cure? Like a long-distance runner or an AAU basketball player, it might just be bananas. Not for cramps or recovery—but for fun. Honestly, a banana might be the funniest fruit: the shape (cough), the sound of the word, and thanks to Gwen Stefani, the spelling is funny too—B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

I challenge you: Google the Savannah Bananas. Find a game in person or on TV. Watch. Enjoy the altered rules designed to enhance fan experience, the two-hour time limit, the TikTok dances midgame, the Banana Nanas dance team, the celebrity guests, and marvel at foul balls caught in the stands counting as an out on the field. This isn’t a Harlem Globetrotters show—the opposing team is trying to win.

The teams are fun, and the comedic moments are great, but these are real ballplayers. There’s no script other than “let’s have fun.”

You might be thinking, “That’s cute.” Slow down—they started this year by selling out Raymond James Stadium (65,000 seats), which hadn’t seen that kind of excitement since TB12 left the bay. They’re on a Post Malone– or Shane Gillis–style stadium tour, peaking with a sold-out Clemson Memorial Stadium—81,000 fans, a Banana record. If that’s not enough, they currently have more Instagram followers than any MLB team.

The Savannah Bananas are saving us—rescuing our childhood love of sports. They’re curing our sports boredom. If fun and laughter are the best medicine, then stop calling them “tickets” to a Savannah Bananas game. Call it what it really is: a co-pay.

***A special thanks to two Chi-Town legends my dad Jim Dunn and his childhood best friend the late great sportswriter Mike Downey whom without the two of you I wouldn't be writing about sports!***

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