Savannah Bananas possibly baseball’s equivalent of Harlem Globetrotters; they’re in Chapel Hill this weekend
By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
When Jared Orton became part of the initial front office with the Savannah Bananas, he had no idea the venture would turn out to be such a spectacle.
As the only president of the Bananas, the Western Alamance graduate has had an up-close view of the wildly successful baseball team.
The Bananas offer a mixture of sports and entertainment, drawing thousands of spectators to their events.
“We’re just trying to have fun and create unique things for people,” Orton said. “What we’ve tried to do is stay true to what we do – let’s stay super fun.”
The Bananas will be in Chapel Hill for games next week at Kenan Stadium, where work has begun to transform the field for the baseball event. The Bananas will take on the Texas Tailgaters, who are one of the traveling teams that face the Bananas.
Orton, 34, is a 2009 Western graduate and former baseball player for the Warriors. He was an intern with the Burlington Royals in 2012, and after graduating from Belmont Abbey with a degree in sport management he became the assistant general manager with the Royals for 2014 and 2015.
But he also connected with Jesse Cole, who’s owner of the Bananas and the mastermind behind the show. Cole is also referred to as the inventor of Banana Ball.
At first, the Bananas were a summer collegiate baseball team in the Coastal Plain League (CPL), taking over at Grayson Stadium after it had been abandoned by a minor-league team in Georgia.
Orton said the ballpark in Savannah accommodates about 5,000 people.
“I remember the first time we came down here,” he said. “I was thinking we’ll never sell all these tickets to this huge minor league stadium.”
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Cole began testing some of the Banana Ball concepts in 2021 with a few events that stretched beyond traditional baseball, though the collegiate summer team still existed in the CPL. The traveling show began with a test in 2021 in Mobile, Alabama. That led to seven more shows in the spring of 2022.
“We had done the limited series (of games),” Orton said. “We started going pretty viral.”
By the end of 2022, the Bananas had gained all sorts of momentum for the “show” side of things.
At that point, the CPL was being sold and that provided an opportunity for the Bananas to step away from the collegiate summer model and go full-fledged into Banana Ball, Orton said.
There’s a huge emphasis on fan interaction as part of the games. And there are dancing players and a player on stilts and all sorts of rules that are specific to Banana Ball.
Some of it won’t appeal to baseball purists, but that’s OK as long as the crowds keep coming.
“They might be sports fans or they might not be sports fans,” Orton said. “We have a bunch of great personalities on the field. It’s really refreshing to people.”
The games have themes that usually, to some degree, feed off local angles and include local personalities, so expect some North Carolina Tar Heels flavor to emerge when they’re at Kenan Stadium.
Cole spearheads the Banana Ball entertainment aspect, while Orton heads the business end of the operation. Still, Orton often travels with the team to help oversee those events and he’ll be in Chapel Hill.
“I’m on the road a decent amount to ensure we’re putting out the product to the best of our ability,” he said. “I get a little creative every once in a while. … I have to remember not to take myself too seriously.”
The Bananas played in more than half of the Major League Baseball stadiums last year.
“It has been cool to see how big they’ve gotten,” said Burlington Sock Puppets general manager Anderson Rathbun, who was an intern under Orton with the Royals.
Wherever the Bananas go, they draw crowds. Orton said one of his fondest memories came when Banana Ball visited historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, Alabama.
“That was magical,” he said.
Big ballparks, stadiums host the Bananas
Now the list of stops spans the country. Among the others notable from Orton’s perspective were games at Fenway Park in Boston and back-to-back sellouts at the Superdome in New Orleans.
The Bananas have been in this region of North Carolina previously, with past shows at Durham Bulls Athletic Park.
Moving into football stadiums came because of ticket demand, with most events having waiting lists for tickets. Some of this was sparked by success at Raymond James Stadium (home of the NFL’s Tampa Bay Buccaneers) in Tampa, Florida, which was a fill-in venue after Tropicana Field (home of baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays) was damaged by a 2024 hurricane and deemed unplayable for more than a year.
Last spring, the Bananas drew about 148,00 spectators for a two-game set at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.
“You get to those NFL stadiums and they’re just big-time,” Orton said. “It’s cool to work with places like that.”
The Bananas have played at Clemson’s Memorial Stadium and Florida State’s Doak Campbell Stadium, and now add another Atlantic Coast Conference football venue in Chapel Hill.
In recent years, Orton’s parents – Melanie and Steve Orton — have relocated to Georgia. She’s a former booster club officer at Western Alamance, and now she’ll help out at events at Grayson Stadium.
Jared Orton is married to the former Kelsey Thompson, whose family still lives in Elon.
The Tailgaters have a Burlington connection as well. Their coach is Joe Mikulik, who was manager of the Burlington Indians in 1997.
Overall, Orton is in his 11th season with the Bananas. It has turned out far different from what he expected when he signed on to help launch a new CPL team.
“You’ve got to pinch yourself sometimes,” he said.
