The Daily - Think Baseball Is Boring? The Savannah Bananas Are Here to Fix That.

Episode Date: August 23, 2026

Jesse and Emily Cole created theSavannah Bananaswith a simple mission in mind: to make baseball as entertaining as possible. They introduced some innovations to America’s pastime, including twerking... umpires, stilt-walking pitchers and TikTok-ready choreographed dance numbers. They tinkered with the rules of baseball, making a game that was shorter and faster, with plenty of opportunities for fan engagement. The result? A sports sensation. In the 10 years since its founding, the team has become one of the most popular sports organizations in the world, reaching tens of millions of fans online, with a waiting list of millions of others hoping to see a game in person. For many, the Bananas are the ultimate sports success story, one that shows a path forward for teams and leagues concerned about fan retention in an era of shortened attention spans and endless entertainment options. But others take a less rosy view of the Bananas and their hyper-energetic brand of baseball, seeing them as an existential threat to a game that fans have loved for more than a hundred years. On today’s show, host Natalie Kitroeff talks with Jonathan Abrams, a Times reporter who covers culture news, about the Bananas phenomenon, and then heads to a Banana Ball game to see things for herself.   On Today's Episode Jonathan Abrams is a reporter for The New York Times covering national culture news.   Background Reading A Broadway Star Is the Savannah Bananas’ Phantom of the Bullpen As Savannah Bananas pursue ‘a billion fans,’ are they real competition for MLB?   Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowave. This is the daily on Sunday. If I were to ask you, what is the only baseball team to ever sell out 500 consecutive games? What would you say? As a hint, they also have the most social media followers of any baseball team in America. Are you thinking maybe the championship-winning Los Angeles Dodgers? Have won the World Series? The New York Yankees?
Starting point is 00:00:33 The story Boston Red Sox? Nope. It turns out that by many metrics, the most popular baseball team in the world is a team that has never won a World Series. That has no future Hall of Famers on their roster. They don't even play professional baseball. They do sometimes dance to Miley Cyrus songs in between plays. Welcome to the Savannah bananas. They started out as an amateur team based out of Savannah, Georgia, but they have quickly become a sensation.
Starting point is 00:01:19 Touring the country, selling out stadiums, and going viral online with a show that's a little bit baseball. Walk off home run. A little bit boy band concert. And a little bit Cirque du Soleil. Today on the show, I'm talking to my colleague and big-time baseball fan Jonathan Abrams. who's covered the bananas about the significance of this phenomenon. And then I get on a plane and go witness a bananas game myself. This man, wow, wow.
Starting point is 00:01:59 Dude, that's actually crazy. All right, this guy. It's Sunday, August 23rd. Jonathan Abrams, welcome back to the Daily. It's great to have you. Natalie, thanks so much for having me on. So I love baseball. I root for the Philadelphia Phillies,
Starting point is 00:02:18 which is a cursed fate. and involves a lot of pain and suffering, but I get the sense that the way I love baseball is different from the way you love baseball. So maybe you can just start by talking about why and how you love baseball. Yeah, baseball is a sport that's just ingrained in me, Natalie. My mom likes to tell one of her favorite stories is that she was cleaning up and I was a baby.
Starting point is 00:02:48 the television was on and she turned off the television and I started crying. It took her a few minutes before she actually figured out that she had to turn the television back on because the World Series was on. Wow. And I was an infant, couldn't talk, what was sitting there watching the baseball game. So that fandom, that love for the game, it never left me. I'm 42 years old. I play in an old man baseball league.
Starting point is 00:03:13 I have this big scar on my arm from foolishly diving for a foul ball, a couple weekends. go. Good for you. I'm a diehard Dodgers fan much, much earlier than when they went on this run. Everybody complains about the Dodgers now, but I will say that, you know, before 2020, Dodgers hadn't won a World Series since 1988. So it was a long drought that has been, I would say, adequately quenched at this point. Yeah, no one feels bad for you, Jonathan. Okay, so baseball, I think it's fair to say, is a little bit of a religion to you. What did you think, when you first heard about the Savannah bananas. This is not baseball.
Starting point is 00:03:56 This is not just another night at the ballpark. Yeah, for me, seeing it initially from the outside, the Savannah bananas seemed like it was something that wouldn't draw the attention of anybody who truly loved baseball, all this dancing and all the skits, and it seemed like an abomination to the sport. Ladies and gentlemen, this is...
Starting point is 00:04:19 To why did it seem like something you wanted to understand then? Because no matter what I thought of it, it was and is insanely popular. As have you seen this team called the Savannah Bananas? There are a small team out of Georgia that's rewritten the rules of the game. Three single game, the Bananas have played at home. It's been a sell-out. I think the wait list to get into Savannah Bananas game is over 4 million people, which makes it, if you think about it,
Starting point is 00:04:53 it's harder to get into a Savannah Banana's game than to go to a Super Bowl or to go to a Taylor Swift concert. In fact, the wait list, this is real for tickets, is up to 2.5 million people. That's how much people are trying to get into these games. No, that's the problem. I can't get a ticket. The wait list is over 3 million people.
Starting point is 00:05:12 And this is also real. My sister and I are on it. And online, their popularity is massive. They have more than 11 million followers on TikTok so their online footprint is greater than any majorly baseball team. Okay, I think we should pause here and just talk about what the bananas are actually doing. Baseball or not baseball. What is different about this sport?
Starting point is 00:05:40 It's almost easier to talk about what's the same. There's a pitcher, there's a batter. There's guys in uniforms and wearing baseball hats. But there's so many. tweaks that make this different from going to a regular baseball game. Banana ball is the fastest and most entertaining show in sports, and the 11 rules guarantee the most fans first experiences every second. For example, if a batter hits a foul ball into the stands and the fan catches it, then
Starting point is 00:06:11 that batter is out. And the bands come away with a second catch. That's nuts. There's sprint walks, so if a batter, gets walked, he gets to sprint the bases, and he gets to go for as long as he can until every defender touches the ball. Also, nuts.
Starting point is 00:06:30 Ball for Sprint from Noah Bridges. He's going to test the Nanner sprint defense. You can't step out of the batters box. That's an automatic strike. A lot of players in Major League Baseball take their time and step out of the box. And there's no bunting. Is he trying to bun?
Starting point is 00:06:46 Oh, no. If you bun, you're throwing out of the game. Oh, my goodness gracious. We have a jet. Yeah, shit, let's dance! You have twerking umpires, you have a player on stilts who hits. You have somebody hit a home run with literally his bat on fire.
Starting point is 00:07:08 What? Is that even possible? I didn't know what was possible until I saw it, and he did it. There's skits, there's choreographed dances, there is never a dull moment. All these quirks, it adds up to a lot faster-paced game, and your head is on a swivel. There's something always going on. It's almost a circus quality of the game where you don't have to be a baseball fan to appreciate or enjoy it. Now Alex Vigour is coming up with the bat on fire.
Starting point is 00:07:43 That tricks on display. And what is the goal of all of this? in theory. The goal of it is to be entertaining. Their motto is fans first. They want fans to be entertained from the very first pitch until the last.
Starting point is 00:08:00 It sounds like they're trying to solve for something that I personally didn't really think needed to be fixed, but which I understand some people believe, which is that baseball can be a little boring. Yeah. You put it in words
Starting point is 00:08:15 that kind of break my heart, but that has been a growing consensus amongst a younger generation of people today. They don't have the patience or the time to watch baseball dissect it like I had during my youth. Yeah, I was going to ask, as a person who's spent quite a lot of time dissecting baseball, what do you think of the quality of the baseball that's being played here? It's good and it's legitimate. You see pitchers pitching in high 80s, low 90s.
Starting point is 00:08:44 You see hitters hitting home runs all the time. And to be clear, these teams, they're playing competitively, right? Like, the results here, they aren't pre-written. The team is actually trying to win. They're in a league, right? Playing against other teams? Yeah. There's five other official teams in Banana Ball,
Starting point is 00:09:06 and they all travel around the country, barnstorming and playing one another in these really competitive and fun-to-watch games. And who all? are these guys, the players? I mean, who can throw a fastball really hard and also be on stilts? There are guys who, a lot of guys have baseball backgrounds. They got drafted by teams.
Starting point is 00:09:30 They played in college. They're trying to keep their dream alive. And instead of barnstorming through towns that maybe you only have 100, 200 people watching a game, these guys are now suddenly playing in front of 50, 60,000 people and giant stadiums. I'll give you an example of somebody who is a unique case,
Starting point is 00:09:52 Derek Klinna. He joined the bananas late last year, and he was a Broadway star. He was in a bunch of different plays. He was Tony nominated. He was making a really, really good career as an actor. But all this time, he had,
Starting point is 00:10:16 this hidden background where he grew up, he was a pitcher, he went to UCLA to actually pitch, and he was on a staff with guys like Trevor Bauer and Garrett Cole, who would go on to become really effective major league pitchers. But in the end, he chose acting. And then somehow got introduced to Jesse Cole, the bananas founder, and they strike up a conversation and Derek decides to join the bananas. I am your angel of music. One of the first games that Derek did was at Yankee Stadium where he came out of the bullpen in a full Phantom of the Opera costume.
Starting point is 00:10:59 You were at that game? Yep. Sing once again with me a strange duet. And actually pitched and struck somebody out with the Phantom of the Opera mask on. No way. Swing and a miss. Derek Clenna as the Phantom of the Opera has his first career banana ball strikeout. I don't even know how he did it.
Starting point is 00:11:24 It's hard enough to throw strikes when you have both eyes and nothing in the middle of your face, but he did it. Okay, I have to say, Jonathan, it is funny just imagining you, someone who's very clearly serious about baseball, watching this guy pitch in a Phantom of the Opera mask. I am having a slightly skeptical response to all of this, and I recognize I'm in the minority here, right? You've told me that they are very popular, and I assume the crowd loved this. Yeah, they did. And you also have to think about it.
Starting point is 00:12:00 It was taking place in the cathedral of baseball, right, in Yankee Stadium, and it's sold out. People are going crazy. It's not baseball as I grew up on it and loved it, but I would encourage you to have an open mind because the way I look at it now is that every music isn't classical music, right? There's alt rock and hip hop and different kinds of music, but we can still love and appreciate classical music.
Starting point is 00:12:27 And I think the Savannah bananas are the alt rock of baseball. Okay, you know I'm going to this game in Minneapolis this weekend. The bananas are playing, hold on, let me just check. the local beach coconuts at Target Field, which is where the Minnesota Twins play. Any advice for me in the lead-up to this experience? I would just encourage you to keep that open mind and to have fun. I bet you will be entertained.
Starting point is 00:13:03 All right. I want to call you when I get back so that we can talk about what I saw there. Is that okay by you? Sounds good. Looking forward to it. All right. We'll be right back. Jonathan. Hello.
Starting point is 00:13:24 Hi. Welcome back. Natalie, I've been dying to hear about how the game went. I honestly am extremely excited to tell you what occurred and to have you help me process what I saw. I had my producer Alex, or you know what, let me be honest. I did not ask my producer Alex to do this. Alex, on his own, created a super cut of my. response to the bananas to this game. And I'm just going to play it for you real quick. All right. Let's hear it. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.
Starting point is 00:13:58 Dude, that's actually crazy. That's crazy. This is crazy. This is crazy. What is occurring? Wow. Okay. Wow. Okay. Wow. The fans absolutely love these guys. Wow. Was that a strike? That was actually a pretty good. Honestly, all of it is crazy. Like, these guys have been doing backflips this entire game, and now they're doing this. Like, it's actually insane. It's like... Does that track?
Starting point is 00:14:27 A lot of wows crazy and insane. I feel like that's some natural reaction seeing banana ball for the first time. Okay. I need to walk through what actually happened out there and get your response to it. Yeah. So start at the beginning. I am here. with my producer, Alex Barron, at Target Field in Minneapolis,
Starting point is 00:14:56 home of the Minnesota Twins, and tonight, home of the Savannah Bananas and the local beach coconuts. We go through security, we get our ticket skin. And then outside the stadium. Can you describe what we're walking up to? We're walking up to a stage where a man is pumping up the crowd. And they're doing like a pre-game show with music and little gags and bits and performances. Okay, there's a man in a cowboy hat. There's a man who just got pie put on his face.
Starting point is 00:15:33 The bananas all-male cheerleading squad, the mananas, are up there doing their thing. Are there no beach balls or some beach balls? There's a million beach balls. And when I tell you, hundreds and hundreds of people are in. this crowd. And they're clapping and waving their arms. Everyone, basically, except me because I'm talking to you, but I feel badly that I'm not, honestly.
Starting point is 00:16:03 You told me that people would be pumped for this game, but this was wild. Did you come for your birthday? It was yesterday, but I'm celebrating all three days. Oh, my God, happy birthday. We're from the New York Times. We met this woman named Twyla. who was there for her birthday, and she had brought her friends in to see the game.
Starting point is 00:16:27 She had driven four hours to be there. I mean, she loves this team. She's been to multiple games this year already. Is this your favorite team? So Ryan Cox, number six, he has, like, the smiley face, eye black. She's talking to me about this player that she loves. And one of his trademarks is that he draws a smiley face on his cheek with eye black every game.
Starting point is 00:16:52 And she shows me her wrist. Yeah. That's not a real tattoo. It's a real, 100% real tattoo. That's a real tattoo. She has that happy face tattooed. Jonathan, on her body. You're kidding me.
Starting point is 00:17:07 You are a Savannah Bananas fan. I'm literally a bananas fan. I love Ryan. So what is going through your head? I guess I just am kind of in disbelief about the depth. of the loyalty of the passion here. I knew that a lot of people liked the bananas, but this is love.
Starting point is 00:17:29 This is devotion. I love these guys. They're so welcoming. It's like coming home to family. I love them so much. That's so nice. Before the game started, we met up with Derek Klenna, the pitcher you were telling us about the guy
Starting point is 00:17:43 who struck out the batter in the Phantom of the Opera mask. Major League Baseball is exclusive. You don't really get included in it. We talked to him in the locker room at Target Field. It was extremely cool that we even got to go down there. This, I feel like, kind of breaks that barrier, breaks the fourth wall. It allows fans to get involved.
Starting point is 00:18:01 They get to come on the field in different events and things like that in different bits. We signed, as you saw, like, for hours before the game. But it is, it's a totally different beast. He basically spent the whole time talking about how the great innovation of what this was was doing everything for the fans, designing an entire, experience around them. You know, diehard baseball fans or diehard people that, like, you really appreciate the sport, think that we're, like, ruining it, which I think it's the opposite.
Starting point is 00:18:29 I think it's just bringing an element to it that it isn't, you know, it's two different things. There's a Mets pitcher that's got pulled up to the big leagues that was all over ESPN for his celebratory strikeouts. He literally sent out these videos. Who jumps up in the air and it's just a straddle and dances off the field and people are losing their mind. I'm like, it's exactly what we do here.
Starting point is 00:18:48 It's exactly what we do here. He's throwing 100 miles an hour and I guys throwing 90. That's the difference. But the point of it's entertainment. Like there is a performance element of these sports. They are two in the same. Exactly. People love watching guys have a bat flip after they hit a home run or celebrate with
Starting point is 00:19:06 their guys. So I don't see the harm in it. And I think that popularity is only growing because of it. It doesn't steal a fan base. If anything, fan bases have different options to pursue. Okay. So on to the backflips. We finished that conversation.
Starting point is 00:19:31 We go upstairs to our seats. The entire stadium is full. Like, full. I mean, I cannot see an empty seat. And then I discovered that there are a thousand activities that happen before any baseball is played. There are songs and stunts and little games. And they do this thing that I guess is like a banana ball tradition
Starting point is 00:19:52 where they bring out a real actual live baby in a tiny banana costume and they hold that baby up like Simba while everybody sings the song from the Lion King. Did they do the right banana and make sure the banana was right before they started playing? Yep, they definitely did. There was a, thank you for reminding me about that tradition. Yes, they had a small child on the field. They had a banana. And the small child's job was to peel the banana.
Starting point is 00:20:37 Okay, she's doing it a really interesting way. She's taking each single one all the way off, which is, okay. And she took a big bite of the banana in order to test whether it was ripe. It was ripe, and it was like the sign that we were going to have a good game, you know? That is so cute. That's insanely cute. The way in which people. People got into this thing in unison and were like so hype, you know, for, again, an hour before the game actually started, I was truly amazed at that part.
Starting point is 00:21:21 And when was the last time you went to a pro game and saw that type of response pregame? I don't know that I've ever been to a pro baseball game in which there was this kind of an atmosphere this early. I have to say they did a wave. I have to say they did a wave, the crowd, as the team was taking the field, you know, everybody putting their hands up. It was absolutely the best wave I have ever seen at a sporting event. Elite tier wave. It's crazy good.
Starting point is 00:21:55 The wave is crazy good. So good that you miss something. Did you notice what you miss? What happened? The game started. Wait, what? I feel like it's sensitive. something that the crowdwork was that good that I actually missed the first pitch altogether.
Starting point is 00:22:14 Immediately, the changed rules start to come into effect. Apparently, our game set the record for most foul balls caught by fans ever in Banana's history. Oh, how many outs did you and Alex mate? We didn't even bring our gloves, which would have been so huge missed opportunity, but we did, We did witness a lot of these things. We saw this crazy, I mean, I would say we saw a bunch of crazy tricks, but a number of like flips while catching the ball. And they did it so many, that happened so many times that I actually started to wonder,
Starting point is 00:23:05 why don't we do that, you know, in regular baseball? I mean, if it's a really easy one, if it's a really low stakes game, if you're up by a lot, don't you think couldn't MLB actually try that out? You know, I mean, it was kind of starting to skew my sense of things, you know, midway through. You know what? But that's a great point because baseball unwritten rules, you showboat, and then you'll get plucked by the pitcher the next inning the next time you come up. Right.
Starting point is 00:23:31 So that shows a big difference right there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously they were getting points for all of these trick plays. So it was very much a part of the thing. It killed me when they went to do a trick play, and then they missed a catch because I was like, oh, God. Some abominable, abominable SHIT, as I would say, in front of myself. But then I realized that's not what I'm not watching real baseball. I kept trying to remind myself of that.
Starting point is 00:23:57 Okay. The entire team is sitting on white folding chairs in a circle around home plate, doing a little dance number. There were performances, even there were dance numbers throughout. That guy's wearing a prince jacket. I kept trying to figure. out how to describe this. It's like being subjected to two hours straight of dad jokes, you know?
Starting point is 00:24:21 Okay, it's like a wedding and an eight-year-old's birthday party. A wedding, an eighth-grander's birthday party, and a WWE. Where does baseball rank in what you saw? The game was a real close one. It was a squeaker, but you would have hardly known. because by the time we were at the end, when it was actually a close game and they were facing off, there had been so much hype around every single kind of circus-like component of it
Starting point is 00:25:00 that you just kind of lost track of the actual game happening, you know? We were sitting next to this nine-year-old named Annabel, and she was having a really good time. She was like yelling at every single moment at which someone would yell. she was yelling. She was really doing her part, or they were doing her part to hook her, because she was into it. So, like, faster than, like, slower. So that kind of, like, compared it. Do you ever get bored watching baseball?
Starting point is 00:25:33 No. You don't get bored watching baseball? No. My girl. I like that. And she said, you know, I like baseball. I just also like this. So it's not like one or the other. It can be both. Yeah. Okay, cool.
Starting point is 00:25:53 That's interesting. I really wonder if it's easier for a kid to develop an interest in both these versions of baseball rather than it would be for an adult who starts in one and then tries to get into the other. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. In any case, the bananas won. Everybody was very thrilled. Wow, I feel like they're actually excited. They did another song and dance number.
Starting point is 00:26:27 And they kind of then took time. to salute the fans, you know, and, like, say thank you that the fans had really made this whole thing happen. They brought out every single fan that had caught a foul ball. And said, basically, like, this was your record-breaking foul ball catching. So you guys made this game. This was a crazy game. And the very last thing they do, before we all go home, is they make everybody.
Starting point is 00:27:11 in the stadium, hold their hands up in the air, and they count one, two, three. One, two, three. And everybody in unison says, fans first. Yeah, it sounded like it ended how the day started, right? A lot of connection, a lot of fan appreciation. Exactly. So that was my bananas experience. Now we're going to just take another quick break.
Starting point is 00:27:38 And then, Jonathan, you and I are going to talk. about what it all means. We'll be right back. Okay. So, as you can probably tell, I am still coming down from all the overstimulation and trying to process what I saw. I want to talk about the focus, the myopic focus, on the fan experience in Banana Ball. The audience experience is special because that is what they're trying to do. That's almost all they're trying to do, make it special. It's baked into the rules of the game. You know, the ball is yellow. I assume in part because fans can follow it when it gets popped up
Starting point is 00:28:27 and you can watch a fan catch it. It's also easier to catch. It just is so obvious that they've designed every aspect of this to cater to the people watching it. It's not about the players. It's about their viewers. Yeah. And they took one of the most mundane aspects
Starting point is 00:28:47 of baseball, a foul ball, that it's either a strike or it doesn't mean anything, and they've turned it into something that is consequential for the game. Totally. I also had this feeling watching it, like the game and the players, it was like being around someone who was constantly trying to get your attention. Like, you could not look at your phone at any one moment because there was this thing that was going on that was grabbing you. Something else was happening. Something else was happening. You know, you were constantly being pulled toward the field. You know, you could not actually take a break. Yeah, and what else is, I think, magical about them is that a lot of their dances,
Starting point is 00:29:27 they're tailor-made for TikTok, for Instagram to put online. So even if you are checking your phone, they're immensely popular on those platforms, too, because, again, it's just servicing the audience. And while there was a part of that that, as I said, was overstimulating, it was also kind of inspiring. I mean, I found it brilliant, actually, and something that not just the MLB or other professional sports leagues
Starting point is 00:29:53 might want to learn from, but maybe any brand that depends on getting people to watch or listen or subscribe. I mean, you don't see professional sports leagues making everything they do about figuring out how to deliver on exactly what people want.
Starting point is 00:30:11 Yeah, but professional sports, If you think a lot about fandom, your favorite team is almost passed on to you like genetics, right? It's like a grandfather passing on to his father to the son or daughter. And you have a lot of history that's there. The bananas have a empty plate, a clean palate. They can imagine anything as they go and they're not linked to that type of history, no. But I think they're linked to knowing what's going on in modern times and being quick and agile. able to come up with different things that will make their audience happy.
Starting point is 00:30:47 Exactly. And I also felt keenly aware of this other major difference in the nature of fandom when it comes to professional sports, which is that delivering on the fan experience at all costs, there is a downside because when you maximize the joy only, you create this set of rules that has nothing to do specifically with athleticism and sports. You give people the ability to catch a foul ball and determine the game, but you also rob them of the experience of watching a batter battle his way through an at-bat, you know? Yeah, without a doubt. Some of my greatest at-bats to watch are a guy just digging in and fouling pitch after pitch after pitch. He's 12, 15 pitches deep into the bat and it's a chess game.
Starting point is 00:31:41 Is the batter going to get another strike? Is the pitcher going to throw a slider, a curveball, change up, fastball, what is he going to do in this situation? So if you're watching, if you're a purist and you know what's happening, you know what the pitcher's trying to do and you know what the batter's trying to do,
Starting point is 00:31:57 it's almost like, okay, he knows that I know that he knows and it's this chess match going on. And it's all going on, pitch to pitch. I mean, for me, listening to that, I don't understand how anyone cannot love baseball. And yet, there has been a sense that many young people just don't agree, you know, that baseball is falling out of favor with younger audiences. What do you think is driving that? We live in a time of shorter attention spans where people want instant gratification.
Starting point is 00:32:31 All of that thinking, it takes time. and it makes for a longer game and it slows the game down. And there's not as many people as in the past who would want to sit down for a three-hour, three-and-a-half-hour game and think through those decisions along with the players. I feel like I've seen other sports trying in some ways to do something like what the band is you're doing.
Starting point is 00:32:54 I'm thinking about like TGL Golf, which is this new league that Tiger Woods and Rory McElroy are behind that's trying to do a faster, pepier version of golf. Yeah, I think it's going to come into all sports. I know one of the things that the NBA is debating is having one free throw count for the regular two points or shortening quarters.
Starting point is 00:33:17 I think everything is trying to shorten itself up and make it in a nice little package to have fans in and out and be able to go on to their next thing. Yeah. You know, for me, the thing that I felt was missing. and this is probably because I'm a sicko, is pain. And before you stop me and say, are you okay, let me explain. The angst for me, the suffering, that is at the core of my, and I think many people's attachment to sports and to fandom, knowing that you could have your heart ripped out
Starting point is 00:33:58 of your chest is the point. And I just think that's not something that you. you're going to get when the main thing is how many backflips these guys can do in two hours. You're right. It's Disney baseball. You're always going to end up with that happy ending. You talking about that, I remember last fall, Game 7 of the World Series, where I was just seconds away. That was such a crazy game. I was seconds away from turning off the television because I didn't want to see the Blue Jays celebrated championship. Probably as like Miguel Rojas was walking up to the plate, I was turning it off because I was sick. Oh my God, right. You're a Dodgers fan. I forgot.
Starting point is 00:34:42 Then their utility player who barely ever plays, comes and hits a home run and ties a game. And it's just the pendulum has swung, right? It's from despair to overwhelming elation in a span of seconds. And are you going to get that with the Savannah bananas? No, but you're going to get that steady ride. that Disney ending where you're going to be smiling and entertained and having fun
Starting point is 00:35:08 and you're going to see dances and you're going to see flips and you're going to see baseball being played You're going to be delighted. You're going to be delighted. But the stakes just aren't going to be there. They're just not going to be the same. There's not the history.
Starting point is 00:35:19 There's not the momentum. It's exhibition baseball with the bananas. I have to confess, Jonathan, during the game, the guy sitting next to us had the toys. twins game on, on his phone, which then gave me the permission structure to put the Phillies on
Starting point is 00:35:37 my phone. And after being up very late in the game, they lost in extra innings in spectacular fashion. So, anyway, forget baseball. I hate baseball. I'm going to do banana ball. That was what I thought. There's, yeah, there's the no stakes with it and you'll be happy. You just may be on a wait list to get into a game for quite a while. Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's honestly been a blast. Natalie, it's my pleasure. Today's episode was produced by Alex Barron.
Starting point is 00:36:19 It was edited by Wendy Doer with production assistance from Dahlia Hadad. It contains music by Dan Powell and was engineered by Sophia Landman. That's it for the daily on Sunday. I'm Natalie Kittrow. See you tomorrow. This one is deep to right center field. It is good. Back to back Turner and Harper.
Starting point is 00:36:41 It's a two-two game.

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