The Josh Innes Show - Why Do So Many People Hate The Bananas?

Episode Date: August 17, 2026

It's pretty crazy how much hate I read about the Savannah Bananas. I don't watch or care. But, the hate is crazy. Also, there are a few Banana Ball rules that should be implemented in MLB. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So I was telling you that I do radio in Denver, right, on KBPI. It's a rock station in Denver and I do the afternoons on there. Radio disc jockey stuff. And I bring this up because the Savannah bananas were in Denver over the weekend. And it is wild. The level of hate people have for this benign, harmless thing like the Savannah bananas. It's a wonderful story. Like it should be something that inspires people.

I listened to most of the... Actually, I might have read this book. It was one of the books by the guy that created the Savannah Bananas or bought the Savannah Bananas and turned them into this gimmick that they are now. But it's a truly uplifting story. And it's just funny because so many people just hate it. And like, there are some things I can understand why you'd hate it, right? Like, I can understand, as we discussed earlier,

or why you'd hate Pat McAfee, or why you'd hate Sophie Cunningham, or why you'd hate Stephen A. Like, there are certain things I can understand. And trust me, I'm well aware that I have an irrational hatred for a lot of things. But when I see people getting angry

over the Savannah bananas, I see them getting angry about, like, the dumbest element of it. Like, I'm so tired to see it and this isn't real baseball. No shit. Visit BetMGM Casino and check out the newest exclusive. The Price is Right.

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And they sell out multiple games. And they always have some sort of celebrity involved and all this. And these people get so mad about it. It's kind of like the people that get mad that ESPN's in bed with wrestling now, which is weird, that they do go on ESPN and try to break down wrestling like it's real. You know, like so that's a little weird. but the things that piss people off, and again, it's not lost on me that I am someone who is easily pissed off by things and easily annoyed by things that probably shouldn't be all that annoying. But the Savannah Banana Hate, like I never heard people.

And maybe if I would have been around in the, you know, early days of the, of the Globetrotters. I don't know what Globetrotter conversations were like, you know, in the 1930s where someone's like, hey, what do you think about this? fake basketball. You see that son of a bitch threw a bucket of confetti on them? Like, I don't know if that's how the conversations were in that era. Maybe they were, maybe they weren't. But in my lifetime, I've

never heard shitty things said about the Harlem Globetrotters. And the Harlem Globetrotters, while they're not that big of a deal anymore, and it's not like they have their games broadcast everywhere, and they're playing smaller venues than they used to. I'm well aware of this. But I wonder if the Harlem Globetrotters got that same level of hate. Like, I never

heard that. I never heard people bitching about the Harlem Globetrotters not being real basketball because some guy shoots a hook shot from the opposite free throw line or some guy throws a bucket you don't know if it's got water or confetti. You never hear any of that. But about this Savannah bananas, they just fucking hate it. And it's such a good story because that's just a dead-in minor league baseball team. Guys got to find a way to make money from it.

And it becomes this kind of freak show. And look, do I find it to be all that entertaining? No, I don't even watch it. Like the other night it was on on like YouTube or something. I watched a little bit of it. And I know I say this a lot. But I do believe there are elements of the Savannah bananas that if you put that in major league baseball, it would make the game better.

To me, the most interesting thing about banana ball is that every inning is its own entity. It's its own game, right? And at the end of the game, you just count the number of innings you won and that's basically how you win the game. And there are other rules that go into that. I like that. Like there's nothing worse than you get a. baseball game, it's 10 nothing after half an inning. And it's like, well, that's ballgame or

you know, five nothing after half an inning. That's that. You know, that sucks. But with each inning being its own game, I kind of fucking like it, you know. There's nothing wrong. And I think Major League Baseball should look at some of the stuff the Savannah Bananas do and go, can we incorporate that into our product? I'm not going to have some guy out on fucking stilts or something like that. But I do think, like the walk, what is the rule they have about the walk? Like you have to run on the walk. Like, that's cool. Like, you want to tell me that wouldn't make a game more fun?

Let me see what the actual rules are. What are the rules of banana ball? All right, here we go. Win the inning, win the point. These are the core rules. Each inning is worth one point. The team that scores more runs than that inning earns the point. The final inning exception, every run counts as a point.

That's cool. Again, that's never going to happen in Major League Baseball. But, like, is that wacky? It's essentially the same concept as like tennis or something, right? Like you match and your sets and all that shit. Two-hour time limit, no inning starts after two hours. The time of baseball games doesn't bother me. It's just the lack of action that's always bothered me in baseball games.

If a batter steps out of the box, it's an automatic strike. Is that a bad thing? Baseball would never do that. But, I mean, they have a pitch clock now. No bunting. Bunting. Bunting is illegal. A bunt results in an immediate ejection. You want to tell me that's a bad thing?

Again, it would never happen. But like, are these rules that extreme? Like, obviously the ones like, hey, fan catches a foul ball, the guy's actually out. Like, okay, that's extreme. But eliminating bunting from baseball, I bet you could probably get 80% of people to sign off on that. Now, this is the one I like. Batters can steal first base on any past ball or wild pitch the batter may run to first. That's cool.

no walks, the ball four sprint. Ball four triggers a sprint instead of a walk. All fielders except the pitcher and catcher must touch the ball before it becomes live. Batters often reach second or more. That's, like, tell me that wouldn't make a baseball game more fun. And I don't think that, like, what's the word I'm looking for? It doesn't totally bastardize the core of baseball to have something like that. But you know how I feel one of my favorite discussions is how you can make sports better,

like what different rules and innovations you can bring into certain sports to make them better. I'm a big believer in eliminating the on-site kick. If you want to kick the on-side kick, kick the on-site kick. But if you would rather have to complete a pass to pick up 20 yards for a first down or something like that, as opposed to the on-side kick, that would make that far more realistic and more exciting than a play that converts like five times at a whole year. and you know my main one, something that I will ride with forever

is the idea that you should be allowed to kick a field goal from a T. At least once a game. Can you imagine it's late in a ball game, your own like 25-yard line? You'd probably have to throw a Hail Mary. You're down by two. You'd have to throw a Hail Mary. But instead, or you have to lateral at 10 times,

but instead what do you end up doing? You put the ball on a T and you try to boot like a 90- year field goal. Tell me that drama. Imagine the drama of watching the ball sail, you know, 90, you know, 90 yards. Like, that'd be pretty fucking cool. I do think sports leagues, you know, for all these people that love to talk about innovation

and, you know, hey, grandpa, get out of the old days. It's funny that sports people don't like to adapt and don't like to change things to make things better. I'm sure when they added the three point line, there were a bunch of old dudes at the barbershop that thought it was the worst thing ever. If tied after the time limit, teams enter a showdown, pitcher versus hitter with minimal defense. The golden batter rule, once per game a team may send any hitter,

you know how I feel about the golden batter rule. The golden batter rule is right up there with my, you should be able to kick long field goals off a T take. It's one of my strongest takes and I ride with that take. But like, you can look at these and say, these aren't that ridiculous. I love the idea of the no walks. Like, is there anything more boring?

then watching a guy take a walk in baseball, but you run down to first and everybody's got to touch the ball? That's cool, man. It keeps the, like, that's my biggest gripe with baseball is that nothing fucking happens. I don't care if the game's two and a half or three hours or five hours. Nothing happens. And I think that's where baseball was misguided in a lot of the decisions they made. Baseball was misguided in the thought that people want the games to be shorter.

I don't think people want the games to be shorter. I mean, they don't want to sit around for a four and a half hour baseball game. But fans don't like to go to a ballpark, and it's already the fifth inning, 45 minutes into the game. Like, I don't think fans like that either. Fans want fun shit to happen. Fans want excitement. Fans want action.

Fans want, you know, the ball to be moving around and not stagnant. You want to tell me that that no walks rule wouldn't add some excitement? I think, like, dude, if I had to look at this list and I said, if they made me the commissioner of Major League Baseball, and they said, Josh, here's what you. you can do. You get to pick one banana ball rule and we will implement that one banana ball rule. But you only get one, but choose wisely. Which would it be? I think I would take the ball for sprint. Now, how many walks do you get per game? A handful of that, right? So it's not like that's

going to happen all that often, but when it does, that's super exciting. And it could change the game. I also like the batters can steal first. Any pass ball or wild pitch the batter may run to first. Like, I think that, but again, that's how often does that happen? You don't get a pass ball or a while pitch all that often. So you're not going to see that. So what is the thing that you could do that would make the game? And you say no bunting, right?

Well, how many times you bunt in a baseball game in 2026? Once? Is there like one bunt attempt per game? Hell, the perfect opportunity to bunt is in the extra earnings in the top of the top half. They don't bunt then. That's another thing that's weird to me about the extra in baseball is like this idea. is that, well, you don't bunt because you don't want to just settle for one run. Well, if you don't get that one run, then you're probably going to lose because that team's

going to come up the next inning and they will bunt the runner over and then they'll hit a sacrifice fly and they will beat you. That's what fascinates me about that so much is how we're so anti-bunt and I get it, but we're so anti-bunt, but in extra innings, one run is still better than no runs. Because if you don't score on the top of the inning in an extra inning game, you are almost no doubt going to lose. It's very hard to overcome that. I like the, look, I dig it.

So, but, and this all started with a conversation about people who hate banana ball. They hate the, just, like, it's this level of, hell, if anybody wants to write a thing about how people hate them, they should write an album about how people hate them, it should be the banana ball people. Like, there is legit vitriol from just old heads and dipshits that just get mad about it. Look, I'm not telling you to like it. because I don't like it. I don't watch it. I've never attended it and I don't really care to. It doesn't really do anything for me.

But the idea that it brings out that much hate from people is crazy to me. Just like this level of hate that is generated from Banana Ball. That's pretty nuts.