I've Gone Bananas!

 

If you’ve tried to get tickets to a Savannah Bananas game recently, you already know the drill: you join a massive ticket lottery, cross your fingers, and pray to the baseball gods for a miracle. It feels practically impossible.  When I first heard the Bananas were coming to Target Field I thought cool, maybe I'll try to get tickets.  When the date finally approached I was bit shocked at the high prices on the secondary market.  Luckily and unbeknownst to me, when tickets became available my sister decided to throw her name into the hat and against all odds, she was actually chosen!

In the whirlwind excitement of securing the golden tickets, she thought she had successfully locked down seats for Game 1 on Friday night but when she took a closer look at the confirmation, she realized she had made a mistake. She hadn’t bought Friday tickets at all; she had actually purchased them for Game 2 on Saturday evening. As it turned out, her minor slip-up was the best thing that could have happened to me because of the sudden shift from Friday night to Saturday, someone in her original group could no longer make it.  Their loss was my gain and when someone asks if you want to see the world's most entertaining baseball team live, you don't hesitate. Of course, I wasn't turning that down!  So I got ready for a wild evening of Banana Ball, and thanked my lucky stars for a perfectly timed mistake.

We arrived about an hour before the game started.  In this photo you can see the stadium was filling up quickly.  Target Field has a capacity of about 39k, and it sold out 3 straight days.  I can't remember the last time that happened for the Twins.

The game itself is timed and full of entertainment.  "Stilts" was hitting .138 going into this game.  He didn't pitch this game but he always tries to hit.

I was lucky enough to be at the game where Robertanthony Cruz  (RAC) pulled off the amazing Iron Lotus.  If you haven't seen it before, this video is worth a look.  Not only was this an amazing play, but the fans set the all-time record for catching 10 foul balls.  If you're not familiar with the rules, cleanly caught foul balls by fans are considered an out.  

Two other foul balls were caught, one by a producer in the media booth and another was tipped by a fan but caught by another.  Both of those catches were ruled as 'no catch'.

Here is a couple of panoramic shots I took during the day and then at night.  Where else are you going to get 39k people singing Three Little Birds by Bob Marley?

It took 2 showdowns but the Bananas won this game 3-2 over the Loco Beach Coconuts.  I had no idea what a Showdown was going into this game.  What happens is basically you have a catcher, pitcher and infielder vs the batter.  The batter must score and can't walk.  If the batter hits a home run, it's game over.  If he hits the ball anywhere, he has to keep running the bases while the fielder chases down the ball.  In the second Showdown, it is just a catcher, pitcher and hitter.

So in the second Showdown, the Coconuts pitcher gave up a hit and had to chase the ball down.  Unfortunately for him, the runner scored before the ball could be relayed back to the catcher.  In the bottom half, the hitter for the Coconuts struck out.

During the 3-game stint, the Bananas brought in former Twins players such as Joe Mauer, who threw out the first pitch on Friday's game (a ball), in the game I attended, Brian Dozier got an at-bat (he struck out), and Trevor May pitched a 1-2-3 inning.  On Sunday, Tony Oliva coached third base and Justin Morneau played a nice inning at first base.

Of course, this post isn't just about the game.  Like Fuji did in a post last year, I picked up a team set, so let's take a look.

The card design is loud and as you can see this team has tons of rookies.  Being these are mostly college players or players trying to get to the minors, there must be a lot of turnover.  I was slightly disappointed this year's team set didn't include a card of Princess Potassia or the Dancing Umpire.

Of course I couldn't just buy a team set of the Bananas, I also needed the team set of the Coconuts.

Here's a look at the back of the cards.  Go ahead, follow these guys.

I bought a jersey and have been wearing it around this past week and have had many people come up to me and ask about the game.  Here's a quick story:  a friend and I were at a local establishment and a guy a few seats down overheard us talking about the Bananas.  He didn't have tickets, but instead took his kid down to the stadium for some of the festivities going on.  There was an autograph line and one player he mentioned  - Dan Oberst - got to talking with his son.  After the autograph session had ended he told this kid to hang around.  A short time later he came back with tickets for his family!  Super cool to hear that.

These games are a lot of fun and very family friendly.  There's always something going on (like the Tsunami warning - where the outfield sprinklers are turned on while the Coconuts bat) so if you make a run to the concessions, you will probably miss something.  The entertainment is non-stop.  If you're looking for an experience that everyone will enjoy, do yourself a favor and buy tickets.