60 Minutes - 07/05/2026: Elemental Crisis, The Knowledge, Banana Ball

Episode Date: July 6, 2026

In what might be the ultimate front of the U.S. trade war with China, correspondent Jon Wertheim reports from the only active rare earth mine in the U.S., deep in the Mojave Desert near the California-Nevada border. Today, China holds a near-monopoly over the strategic metals that are key components in smartphones, robotics and EVs, but also fighter jets, drones and radar technology. Wertheim looks at the private company, now partly owned by the federal government, that is ramping up rare earth mining, processing and magnet-making in response to China’s threats to cut off rare earths. Graham Messick is the producer.  As tech companies promise that AI-powered autonomous vehicles will transform transportation, correspondent Anderson Cooper takes a ride down the ancient roads and medieval alleyways of London in the iconic black cab. London’s black cab industry still relies on a 161-year-old test called “the Knowledge,” requiring prospective cabbies to memorize thousands of London's landmarks and the shortest routes between them all. Cooper reports on this legacy institution and why London cab drivers aren’t about to hand over their keys to big tech. Katie Brennan is the producer.Something unusual is going on in Major League Baseball stadiums across the country, and it isn’t traditional baseball. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports from Savannah, Ga., on the dancing, back-flipping, lip-syncing almost-baseball team, the Savannah Bananas. They’ve created a new twist on the sport, which they call Banana Ball. Among its rules: a two-hour time limit; no bunting, walks or mound visits; and if a fan catches a foul ball, it’s an out. Stahl meets Banana Ball’s unorthodox, yellow-clad founder, Jesse Cole, and discovers the electric, circus-meets-sporting-event atmosphere that is selling out ballparks. Shari Finkelstein and Collette Richards are the producers.

In our southwest of Las Vegas, in the guts of the Mojave, sits the only active rare earth mine in the U.S., an unlikely battlefield in our trade war with China, which has a near monopoly over these strategic metals. When Beijing choked off supplies last year, James Latinsky and his company got the call. We got called into the Pentagon, and it was clear that there was a directive from the president to solve this problem as quickly as possible. On ancient roads in London, a very modern battle is brewing. If we do a left here, the goldsmiths hole. Black calves will soon be competing with artificial intelligence-powered autonomous taxis. But as we found out, London's cabbies aren't about to hand over their keys. Your knowledge is better than what a Google map will tell you to go.

Don't make me laugh. Seriously, you know, it's like comparing a hot dog vendor to Gordon Ramsey. It looks like baseball and feels like baseball, but then there's this. An umpire feeling the music? A batter on no. Stilts? Gymnastics in the outfield and on the way home. Longtime baseball writer Tim Kirchon came to a game and he said this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen.

I loved it. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm John Worthheim. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Bill Whitaker. Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. In May, President Trump traveled to Beijing for a summit with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. One agenda item that figured prominently rare earth elements.

Right now, China holds a near monopoly over these strategic metals that are key components in so much that makes the modern world go. Smartphones, robotics, EVs, also fighter jets, drones, and radar technology. That is, China controls materials essential to America's ability to wage war. But tonight, the story of an American company confronting this elemental crisis. It mines rare earth elements, processes them, and makes them into super-powered magnets. And as we first reported in March, it's part-owned by us, American taxpayers, in an unusual deal crafted by the federal government. In our southwest of Las Vegas, in the guts of the Mojave, mountain past California might be the ultimate front of our trade war with China.

This massive cavity in the ground? Behold the only active rare earth mine in the U.S. This is an unlikely battleground. Are we stepping on rare earths as we speak? Yes. Everywhere you look is rare earths. And Michael Rosenthal and James Latinsky are the unlikely men in charge. likely men in charge, two Floridians in the snow, two finance types suddenly trafficking and mining

in metallurgy. You have no background in geology, and now you're running the biggest rare earth mine in the U.S. This is just such an important site, and the idea that this entire supply chain was on the other side of the world in China. It just occurred to us that someone had to help fix this problem. The Trump administration is keenly aware of the problem. of China's rare earth dominance. Doug Bergum is Secretary of the Interior. If you have a cell phone, have a laptop, if you drive a car, then you're touching rare earth minerals and rare earth magnets.

It's essential to everyday life, but it's also essential to aerospace, telecom, defense systems. Yes, defense systems. According to the military, one F-35 fighter jet contains about 100 pounds of rare earths incorporated into its various parts. Just to be clear, the U.S. defense industry is subject to the whims of China and Xi Jinping for military technology?

Well, this is one of the reasons why President Trump created the National Energy Dominance Council with a broad set of objectives. One of those was to make sure that we had secure supply chains for critical and rare earth minerals. Right now, we don't have secure supply chains of rare earths, because China has cornered the market. They also weaponize it because if anybody

in the rest of the free world said, hey, we're going to start mining or we're going to start refining, then they would target that particular mineral, dump a quantity onto the market, drive the price down in companies, including U.S. companies that were profitable, suddenly became unprofitable. Before we proceed, let's dispense with a misnomer. Rare earths aren't rare. Here's what is rare, sites with high enough concentrations of rare earths and accessible enough locations to make extraction worthwhile.

In their purest form, rare earths aren't rocks, but elemental metals. Deep cuts on the periodic table, numbers 57 through 71, and two others for those scoring at home. Lanthanum, serium, prasiodymium, neodymium, samarium. Julie Klinger is a professor of environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a rare earth's expert who's visited minds worldwide and written extensively on the subject. What are their qualities? The thing that distinguishes rare earth elements are their fantastic magnetic, conductive, and optical properties. So they're used often the way you might use spices and cooking, because if you add just a little bit of a certain rare earth element, say, to a magnet,

that enables that magnet to be both very small and very powerful. Geologists found rare earths at Mountain Pass in 1949. By the 60s, individual rare earths were being mined, separated, and utilized. not least Europium, which enhanced the color red in early television sets. CBS presents this program in color. Then in 1982, researchers found that another neodymium strengthens magnets. And these super-high-powered magnets are used in everything from making your cell phone buzz to the navigation components for drones and smart bombs to high-speed rail and electric vehicles.

For decades, Mountain Pass was the world's rare earth mine. But gradually, then suddenly, mining and magnet making began moving offshore. Familiar story. China could do it cheaper. The U.S. disinvested in rare earths. Absolutely. Why? It's a dirty business. It's a risky business.

It's a difficult business to really break even. In the 1990s, Mountain Pass fell victim to economics and to environmental regulators, after radioactive water leaked into the desert. The mine languished for a decade until a new company, Mollicor, tried unsuccessfully to compete with China and revive the business. James Littinsky was running a Chicago hedge fund looking for value in distressed companies.

When Mollicor filed for bankruptcy in 2015, Latinsky glimpsed opportunity. When you're running a hedge fund, there's not much tangible to it. You're moving numbers on a screen. And then I made the mistake. of going out and looking at the site. Actually seeing what your investment looked like.

Yes. And I was just blown away by the scale of the assets. The assets? This massive open pit, these concentric circles, a mine 3,000 feet across, 600 feet deep, with one of the world's richest deposits. Littinsky turned to Michael Rosenthal, then working for a New York hedge fund. The two were close friends growing up, and they decided to partner.

You appreciate the absurdity of the story. For sure. Two hedgefung guys buy a mine. What could go wrong? For a while, plenty. When they bought the mine in 2017, it was underwater, financially and literally. 30 million gallons had puddled at the bottom. There were only eight employees. They called their new company MP Materials and got the mine back up and running. Blasting Earth, then crushing rocks into gravel, then milling it into fine powder. Litinsky took over the business as CEO, while Rosenthal spent long days on site becoming an expert on rare earth mining and refining.

How do you characterize a division of labor here? I get dirty and Jim explains what we're doing. Today, Mountain Pass employs more than 700. Rosenthal manages the operation. I cannot get over how extensive and intensive all of this process is once you're done with the actual mining. Yeah. Mining is really the easiest part.

The hard part? Separating the rare earths from the rock, and then each other. Three years ago, MP reached a milestone. After investing hundreds of millions of dollars, it was able to refine neodymium and prasiodimium to 99.9% purity. This is the refined product.

This is the money room. This is it. This is it. Each bag was worth around $120,000. There were $300,000. bags, roughly 36 million in inventory when we visited. So this fine powder will end up, could end up in your pocket. Could end up in my iPhone.

MP needed one last link to bypass China and reclaim the supply chain, making the final product, those high-powered rare earth magnets. So in Fort Worth, Texas, MP built this facility, where pure rare earth powder from Mountain Pass gets melted, cooled, compressed, diced, and eventually turned into, well, These. In a matter of months, millions will be going into GM cars and into Apple products starting next year. MP was fulfilling its business plan, taking rare earths from mine to magnets.

In the spring of 2025, it alchemized from a vertically integrated business into a pivotal player in our national security. We will supercharge our domestic industrial base. Last year, President Trump unveiled his global tariffs plan, so-called Liberation Day. China retaliated to devastating effect, choking off rare earths to the U.S. Ford Motors, for one, suddenly without magnets, had to temporarily stop making explorer SUVs. After a series of trade truces between the U.S. and China, the rare earth spigot came back on. Litinsky says few realize how close we were to economic catastrophe.

There were major manufacturers that didn't even realize the extent of the rare earth magnets that they had in their supply chain. We were seeing the economy on the verge of shutdown. With markets reeling, senior Trump administration officials summoned Latinsky and Rosenthal to Washington. We got called into the Pentagon, and it was clear that there was a directive from the president to solve this problem as quickly as possible.

What did the government want from you? The Pentagon wanted a Manhattan-style project to accelerate the entire supply chain of rare earth magnetics in the country. That's the analogy. Those exact words were used. Manhattan Project or Operation Warp Speed, we've got to work to scale up everything that you're doing as quickly as we possibly can. A Manhattan Project for Rare Earth resulted in an unusual deal. The Pentagon agreed to inject $400 million into MP materials and took a 15% ownership stake. So we, Americans, are all in the rare earth business now. Plus, critically, the deal came with a guaranteeing.

10-year price floor for rare earths. So even if China tries to flood the market again, driving down prices, MP is covered. Has there ever been anything like this? Well, exactly like this, maybe not, but if you look back, whether it was the railroads or aluminum for aviation prior to World War II or the semiconductor industry, there's actually a long tradition of really critical industries where our country needs to bring online infrastructure. And I think this is one of those industries. And the government had one more stipulation for MP, ramp up rare earth magnet production tenfold.

To do so, MP is building an even bigger rare earth magnet factory also in Texas. That, it says, could produce enough to meet the country's needs. It's expected to be complete in 2028. Still... As we see here today, what percentage of the world's rare earth magnets are made in China? Well north of 90%. So China, in effect, can still hold the world hostage here. hold the world hostage here.

They currently do. Back in Washington, Secretary Bergam has been a vocal supporter of stockpiling America's critical minerals. He defends the MP deal, even if it strays from the principles of market capitalism. You're talking about equity positions in private companies and price floors, and in this case, a demand that production increases 10x tenfold? Wait a second. That was the whiff of socialism.

I wouldn't call it socialism. I'd certainly call it pragmatism, because Free markets work, but they don't work if you have an adversary that controls a monopoly that control the price. You're talking China. I'm talking about China. There's no market setting the price. It's China setting the price.

To get this industry started again, we have to do some things to kickstart the private capital. This kind of industrial policy you're talking about, does this happen but for China's retaliation to last April? I think it was a catalyst. Frankly, we probably needed a crisis to wake up. And so I think if there's a silver lining in the sense, what happened last year was a big-time crisis that we needed.

I'm struck by how quickly the economics bleed into geopolitics. If China says, listen, we're going to go invade Taiwan, and if you stand in our way, we're shutting off our rare earth magnets. Well, that's the risk. As it stands today, we need permission from the Chinese government to make things. We need permission from the Chinese government to make military things. And the practical reality is that it's not an acceptable condition. And so we have to change this dynamic.

The current U.S.-China trade truce is set to expire in November. Absent a New Deal, our rare earth supply, short-term anyway, remains vulnerable. On ancient roads and in medieval alleyways in London, a very modern battle is brewing. Black cabs, which are as synonymous with that city as Buckingham Palace, will soon be competing with artificial intelligence-powered autonomous taxis. Tech companies promise these AI invention, some of which are already operating in several American cities, are safer and smarter than human drivers. But as we first told you earlier this year, London's cabbies aren't about to hand over their keys. After all, just to get a license, they've already proven their own kind of intelligence, studying often for years, to pass a 161-year-old test called the knowledge. There's nothing artificial about it.

They just have to memorize 25,000 streets and thousands of landmarks and businesses and know the shortest routes between them all. Look, we're the oldest form of transport in the world. In fact, we come before buses and trains and stuff. Yeah, we are the icons of London. If we do a left here, you'll have the goldsmiths hole. Tom Scullion has been driving one of London's famous black cabs for the past 34 years.

What's the weirdest request you've gotten from a passenger? What, this week? Or you wouldn't believe? There's a guy that's a regular ride, and he's got an Irish wolf hand. Dog. Gives you're a bit of paper where the dog lives. Dog jumps in the bag. One of the best customers I've got.

Never says a word. Never complains about a ride. But we get people, Hayland's day in the morning, take my kid to school. Never seen me before in the life. Probably never seen me again. That's the trust we get. The trust and confidence in cabbies here dates back to 1865

when the knowledge exam was first introduced to London's horse-drawn cabman. Do you have riders testing your knowledge? Every right. Which way you're going, mate? And Google says this and Google says that. You're never going to beat the knowledge. Your knowledge is better

than what a Google map will tell you to go. Oh, don't bink me laugh. Seriously, you know, it's like comparing a hot dog vendor to Gordon Ramsey. At the Transport for London office, nervous, aspiring cabbies dress up in their Sunday best to take a series of oral exams known as appearances. Whenever you're ready, sir, we'll go from Soho House, 40 Greek Street, to the Chancery, Rosewood, please. Candidates are quizzed on how to get between two random points. I live on left, Greek Street, right Sharsbury Avenue, left Great Women Mill Street, forward Haymarket.

As examiners measure the distance, ensuring they're calling the shortest route. Unfortunately, so I can't score you today. He failed this round, but for those who do pass the knowledge, this memorization has proven to be so challenging, it can change the structure of their brains. A study from University College London found cab drivers posterior hippocampi, the part of the brain. linked to memory, got bigger throughout their careers. Everyone in their profession has had to train themselves with knowledge to be the best what they are, and that's what we're doing.

Stephen Fairbrass has been trying to pass the knowledge for eight years, Anshu Morjani for five. They showed us the official study guide known as the Blue Book. These are like the points. Points of interest. So paying customer would want you to take them to. I mean, there's thousands of them. Yeah, 6,000 of them.

I just have to look at this. The last judgment, pH, the Law Society Hall, the Londoner Hotel, the Marquis, the Mon Library, the National Gallery. I mean, this is crazy that you have to know all this. You have to learn individual restaurants? Individual restaurants. Public houses.

What if a restaurant goes out of business? And he changes names and then you learn a new name. Then it comes on the list. It comes on the list. Yeah, it goes on the list. Now their knowledge is being tested like never before. Autonomous vehicles haven't been approved to pick up passengers in London yet,

but several companies are already trying out their cars here. Wave, a British startup, backed by Nvidia and Microsoft, hopes to be operational later this year, as does Waymo, which is owned by Google's parent company, Alphabet. Takedra Mawakana is Waymo's co-CEO.

She says putting more of its robo-taxies on the roads can save lives by reducing the million traffic deaths worldwide each year. You believe driverless car are safer than a human-driven vehicle. In the case of Waymo, we actually have the data that shows us that we're five-time safer than a human driver. Waymo has already made significant inroads in the U.S.

It first began offering rides to customers in a Phoenix suburb in 2020. Now, millions of riders across 11 major U.S. cities are being driven by Waymo's each month. Humans want to get in the car, send that last email they didn't get to send, and check on the kid that's screaming. But we're trying to drive and do that.

So this really gives you the chance to take care of all of those things and then let the Waymo driver safely get you from point A to point B. You call it a Waymo driver, but there's no driver. We really think it's important to think of it as there is a driver. Right? This driver is the most experienced driver in the world. We travel over 2 million miles a week. So humans drive about 700,000 miles in a lifetime. So this is almost three lifetimes per week that our fleet is driving.

Because it's been trained on every other ride that Waymo's given? At the whole fleet, yes. Waymo's AI has also driven billions of miles in simulation to train for the countless rare scenarios it might face on roads, like snow on the Golden Gate Bridge or even an elephant stopping traffic. Start ride whenever you're ready. In San Francisco, we took a trip in one of its robo-taxies with product manager Chris Ludwig.

Happy Friday. It's a little freaky not to have a driver. You hear this all the time, but I'm watching the wheel very, very carefully. But after a few minutes, the ride felt strangely normal. It feels like a very careful driver. Our goal is kind of blissfully boring. The car is outfitted with 29 cameras, six radars, five microphones, and five LiDAR sensors, which continuously pulse to measure distances, objects, and people

as far as three football feels away. Inside, a screen shows riders what the car is seeing. It sees an intersection, I don't know, 300 feet away, but because there's other cars, I can't see it, but it sees around these other cars. That's right, and that's partly the design of the placement of the sensors makes it superhuman compared to what a human would be able to do. Waymo says the data gathered from these sensors enables the AI to

respond faster than a human. We saw that when a woman talking on her phone crossed right in front of us. It's kind of crazy to see a person change their mind and how quickly the Waymo responded to like a slight motion of them moving forward. Exactly. The system has learned to react to those subtle cues because that's what's necessary. Waymo's AI may have a lot of training, but it still makes some rookie mistakes. Oh my God, what the .

Is that Waymo doing? In Los Angeles, a Waymo drove through an active police scene. Waymo, come on! There's also been incidents of the robotaxies getting in the way of emergency responders and illegally passing stopped school buses, leading to a software recall and a federal investigation. Back in London, Waymo's robo-taxies have been driving the streets to build a detailed 3-D map to train its AI, a company standard before operating in a new area. But it does have competition.

We want to make sure our AI can understand every concept of might encounter. Alex Kendall is Waves CEO. Unlike Waymos, his artificial intelligence doesn't map out a city before driving in it. How is it possible you don't need to map a city entirely before getting your vehicles to drive autonomously in it? Well, think about how you and I learned how to drive. I learned how to go through a few traffic lights, and that taught me how the concept of traffic lights were. In a similar way, that's how our AI learns. We train it on millions of hours of experience driving all around the world.

So this means when it goes somewhere it's never seen before or it's never been mapped, it can understand what's in front of it and make decisions in real time. Waves' Robotaxies are still in testing and not yet available to the public. The products that we're building will use inbuilt sensors. But Kendall believes his AI will be able to more easily adapt to new environments. It's good for drive. He took us to Westminster, a district in London that's home to some of the city's most historic landmarks to show us where he's been training his fleet since waves' early days in 2019.

And your foot is not... So I'm not touching the controls. The AI is controlling the steering, the speed, the indicator is the brake. Until robotaxies are approved by the government here, a human has to sit in the driver's seat for safety. Here's one of the busier roundabouts in front of Westminster. right in front of Parliament. Lots of tourists around different vehicles. This guy just crossed into Arroy and... Now back to another lane.

There's a bike that we have to wait for before making the lane change. There's such a long list of things that can happen on the road. I think that's the main advantage of an AI driver here is that it can have the intelligence to deal with things that you may never expect on the roads. I'll go lead by Palmaurice, lifting to Marlborough Road. Aspiring cabby, Stephen Fairbrass,

didn't seem too concerned about that. Do you worry about the future of this? You know, autonomous vehicles driving around? No. Why don't you worry? To me, the human brain will always be the strongest tool. Can you imagine you're trying to

hold down a vehicle with no driver in it? You're standing there in the rain, trying to get home, and that vehicle just drives straight past you because it hasn't got a sensor or a human brain or an eye to turn. So to me, human beings, drivers, always going to be needed.

Always. Enshu Mourjani, however, didn't seem so sure. Every profession is being affected by AI. I don't know what it's going to do in near future, but it's always there on your mind that yes, and you're getting into a career, not knowing what the future is. The future is.

Over the last decade, London's black cab industry has seen a steep decline. The number of drivers has fallen from 25,000 to 16,000 today. So has their income, as Uber and other ride-hailing companies have been cutting into their business. Mr. Ferbrus.

Even so, hundreds still sign up for the knowledge each year. Okay, sir? This was Stephen Fairbrass's 20th attempt. We're going to go to the Riding House Cafe, please. Riding House Cafe, sir, is on Great Titchfield Street, sir. Okay, sir?

Go right into Mortimer Street, right into Norseur Street, left into Ridinghouse Street, left into Portland Place. Great Trial Street, said, down the right. Okay, all right. Sorry, sir. I can't remember that other name of the Portland Place. All right, calm down, okay, deep breaths. Yeah?

Fair breath. has failed this round and we'll have to try again. For Anshu Morjani, this was his 41st try. Run me down to Ladywell Station, please. Lead by Broccoli Road, left Adelaide Avenue. Complair on board, lead by Ladywell Road, right, Railway Terrace, Sedan left. Today, I'm going to score you, okay?

Oh, thank you, sir. He passed. Thank you, Mr. Morgiani. Very well, thank you. And in May, After five years of trying, where Johnny finally completed the knowledge. He'll now earn his license.

There's probably some people going to be watching who think, you know, why spend years of your life studying for this exam when you could be Uber drivers much faster? Do you want to drive around in one of them famous cabs out there? Hundreds of years of all of history. It means a lot to people of London. It's like London without a queen, I'll say. You can't have a London without a king or queen.

you can't have London without a black cab. No. Correct. Impossible. There's been something unusual going on in a whole lot of Major League Baseball stadiums lately, and it isn't baseball. Well, at least not exactly. It's Banana Ball.

And if you've never heard of it, get ready for something, well, bananas. As we first reported last year, it's a classic, against the odd story that started with a scrappy college summer league baseball baseball. baseball team in Savannah, Georgia, lovingly named the Savannah Bananas, with an unorthodox owner who dreamed of making America's pastime livelier and more fun, with dancing players, trick plays, and nonstop entertainment for the fans. Think Harlem Globetrotters only more so. Take a look.

Now Dan Over. That one chopped up the middle. looks like baseball, and feels like baseball. But then, there's this, an umpire feeling the music? A batter on no, stilts? Gymnastics in the outfield. Catches the ball, are you kidding me? And on the way home.

The bananas have won the inning. Banana ball is the creation of Jesse Cole, who dresses in banana yellow daily. He's the owner and ringmaster of this circus. It's not baseball. Or is it baseball? Obviously, it started from the idea of baseball. But now let's just turn it up a little bit.

Turning it up a little bit, Savannah Banana style, means the show starts hours before the game, with fans and players dancing outside before the doors open. Then on the field, gymnasts. The Banana Split. A dance team made up of grandmas, the banana nannas. And instead of cheerleaders, these guys, the man nannas. It's all intentional, so this is the script.

You have a script? There's almost 50 things that happen before the game starts. The idea is to have something entertaining for everyone, like the six-year-old leading a crowd warm-up, to appeal to all ages, baseball fans or not. How long in the car? Ten hours. You drove here for ten hours.

The game itself, between the bananas and their main banana ball rivals, the party animals, also owned by Cole, is a real baseball competition with some rule twists. There's a two-hour time limit, no mound visits, no walks or bunts, and if a fan catches a foul ball, it's an out. Trick plays like between-the-leg throws to make an out and back-flip catches are encouraged. And a few times a game, players go to bat with lip-sinked, choreographed productions like this one

featuring infielder Jackson Olson. Long-time baseball writer Tim Kirchin came to a game and he said this is the stupidest thing I have ever seen. I loved it. So gratefully finished with the I love it. Exactly, right. But, you know, there are people who would be offended that you're changing baseball. I believe if you're not getting criticized, you're playing it too safe.

Safe isn't Jesse Cole's style. His early dreams of playing for his hometown Red Sox ended with a shoulder injury in college that sent him into coaching and a discovery he wasn't expecting. I'm sitting in the dugout and I realized something. I'm bored out of my mind. And if I'm bored, there's got to be other people that are probably bored with baseball as well. He got a job managing a failing college summer league team

in Gastonia, North Carolina, called the Grizzlies, where he started shaking things up with dancing and silliness. The first time I saw Jesse, he's the general manager of the team, keep in mind. Emily McDonald was working for a minor league team in Augusta at the time.

He is on the field. teaching his players how to do the thriller dance. So you gotta get the arms into it, you gotta get the head. You said, oh, that guy's for me. But we nailed that dance, we nailed that dance. Emily joined the Grizzlies, and three years later, were you going to be a lucky time in the world? Would you marry yellow?

Joined Jesse, permanently. And yes, he was already wearing that yellow tucks, inspired by his idols, showman P.T. Barnum, and Walt Disney. It's something I believe in. It's standing out. It's being different. and if your owner is dressed up in a yellow tuxedo, I mean, I think that gives permission to everyone else to not take themselves too seriously, to have fun.

Were you able to turn the Grizzlies around? Yeah, from the team that was probably worst in the country in attendance. We climbed up to be fourth in the country in attendance. But what about playing? Oh, we won championships. When you have fun, you play better. In 2015, the newlyweds launched the bananas as a new college summer league team in Savannah,

building fans with all you can eat food, eat food and always upping the fun. They won titles, but something kept gnawing at Jesse. Some fans were leaving the stadium before the game was over. Even with everything going on? It was eating me up inside, but then I realized that means there's a fundamental problem with the actual game. He began videotaping the crowd and studying.

When are fans looking at their phones? When are they not paying attention to the game? Mound visits. Batter stepping out, taking forever. All right, if you step out? Oh, I hate that. Yes. And they play with their gloves.

And so we said, what are all the normal rules of a baseball game? What would be the exact opposite? He started dreaming up ideas for a faster, more exciting game. Think about this in a baseball game. There's a play called a walk. It's unathletic, it's called a walk. So we said, what would be the exact opposite? A sprint.

And so was born the ball four sprint, where the batter takes off and can't be tagged out until every fielder has tied. the ball. He's going to be rewarded with two bases. So now a walk because one of the most exciting plays in sports. Bang, bang. And then what about bunting? Now I know this is controversial. But if you bunting in banana ball, you're thrown out of the game.

What's wrong with bunting? There's no bunting. I like bunting. Some traditionalists do. When I came up to the plate the first time as a five-year-old, my dad said, Jess, swing hard in case you hit. And I believe in baseball, banana ball. Come up and swing the bat, try to create something really special instead of the bunk.

So that first tryout. Coach's Tyler Gillum and Adam Viren helped create the new game and recruit players to try it out. You were looking for really strong baseball players. Exclusively. I was pushing a wheelbarrel full of concrete, and my phone went off, and it was my mama. Dakota All-Briton had played high school baseball

in his Georgia hometown, then got a job in construction. She said, hey, we got a baseball tryout this weekend. I said, why'd you do that? You know, I ain't played ball in two years. She said, well, I told him you could walk on stilts. And with me not having any knowledge on what the bananas was, I've asked her again. Well, why'd you do that? I hadn't done that in 10 years.

You hadn't walked on stilts in 10 years? I hadn't walked on stilts in 10 years. They'd been a Christmas present when he was 10. As a matter of fact, on the way two tryouts, I realized that the straps that held them on my legs were dry-riding. We stopped by tractor supply and got dog collars. They were held on my leg by dog collars. He had played high school baseball, not the highest level. And he probably wasn't going to make the team.

He said, I brought my stilts. Do you want me to wear them? And I said, nah, unless you can hit in him. I said, heck, yeah, I can. I got up there. You had no idea. I had no idea I could do it, but I wasn't going back down from a challenge. And the entire tryout stops.

I wonder why. It's dead quiet. Did you hit the ball? I did. I surprised myself just as much as I surprised everybody else. The coaches were still going to cut him until Jesse intervened. Jesse says, guys, you don't see the vision. The vision is things being done on a baseball field nobody has ever seen.

Other players, like Robert Anthony Cruz, Rack for short, joined the bananas with stronger credentials. He'd been signed by the Washington Nationals, this video of him sharing the news with his dad. Oh my God. Your grad releases, son. Went viral. But as with so many players... One year later, I got released by the Nationals. And my wife and I moved back in with my parents. Bananas players told us they'd all dreamed of playing in the major leagues. Raise your hand.

When baseball didn't work, did you all think you were done? Yeah, 100%. They say banana ball is a second life. They're still practicing that old game, plus one-upping each other on cool tricks and smooth moves. That elaborate batter walk-up routine, also part of afternoon practice. Like literally, like four hours before. Oh my God.

So in the middle of the afternoon, they are learning a dance for that night for the first time. I mean, players, the talent level, they learn a tremendous amount of steps for about 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and then they're doing in front of a silk-down crowd. And sometimes practicing in front of the crowd. I remember looking at you. You were doing the dance too. You were trying to learn it. Like, we're all trying to learn this stuff during the game.

Fresh. Banana ball players have full-year contracts and are paid significantly more than most minor leaguers. Their salaries have risen every year, as has their fan base. This was the home stadium of the Philadelphia Phillies on a Saturday night in September 2024. A completely sold-out, standing room.

room-only crowd of 45,000. It was one of six Major League Baseball Stadiums the bananas sold out that season, including Fenway Park. With clips of dances like this going viral, the bananas now have more TikTok followers than all 12 of last year's MLB playoff teams combined. As in Savannah, crowds gather hours early. Banana Ball is now a multi-million dollar private business.

Jesse turns away investors. To build fans, he reinvests. He keeps ticket prices low, $60 max, and broadcasts all games free on YouTube. What's up, guys? Playing in an MLB stadium, players told us, is thrilling, even for someone already 10 feet tall.

Just this section right here as big as my whole entire hometown. Stilts told us he'd be pitching this game. Do you really throw strikes? Oh, absolutely. It coming straight down like that, they've got to hit it just perfect. Do they're going ground out or pop up? Now coming to... And sure enough...

The world's tallest pitcher! In the top of the sixth, facing the party animals version of a switch hitter... ...going to show off his switch hitting skills. There was one of those... strikes. Now a three-two count. With the pressure on, Bouncer, grab, 360, Olson bounces it to first. He got the third out. Stilts continues to shine. Then in the bottom of the seventh, with a runner on first and the bananas down by one,

Jackson Olson took off on a ball-for sprint. Then, with men on the corners, the former National Science, rack was up. A three-run homer. As far as we could see, nobody left early. Last season, Banana Ball officially became a league with two more teams, and they were set to play not just at 17 MLB stadiums, but at three NFL football stadiums as well. Will you fill those stadiums?

They're sold out. Already? It's crazy. All of it's crazy. Some might even say bananas. This season, the banana signed a Broadway musical star as a singing pitcher and up the number of banana ball teams to six. They'll play in 75 stadiums, including two that seat more than 100,000 fans.

See how Banana's Foster celebrates Foster families. There's so many superheroes out there. At 60 Minutes Overtime.com.