Mark Kiszla: How the Savannah Bananas won something bigger than the World Series | Sports Coverage

They would have no shot to beat the Dodgers in the World Series, but the Savannah Bananas have discovered the cheat code to life.

The quickest way to America’s heart is through its funny bone.

The Bananas keep score in smiles.

“It’s a crazy spectacle of baseball. We put on a show that the people want to be part of, whether it’s in person or on YouTube,” Bananas first baseman Correlle Prime told me Saturday.

“Moms come to our show and watch the players dancing with their shirts off. Dads watch the games and think, ‘Hey, these guys can actually play ball.’”

During the saddest baseball season in the history of Colorado, the Bananas came to town and turned those frowns upside down. Coors Field morphed into Banana Land on a raucous summer night that rocked like Mardi Gras and featured almost as much bare-chested partying.

For long-suffering Rockies die-hards, this was both a source of welcome comedy and catharsis, as 50,000 paying customers stood and screamed alongside the Dad Bod Cheer Squad for players named Stilts and KJ.

So, what’s the big deal … and the Banana appeal?

Well, if baseball is poetry on the grass, Banana Ball is a kick in the arse, pure slapstick in the grand sports tradition of everyone from Max Patkin to Meadowlark Lemon.

Instead of Kiss Cam on the scoreboard, the Bananas play Guess That Butt.

Instead of batting practice, players hit the diamond in the mid-day sun to work on their choreography.

“You don’t want to be too good at dancing. You can be a little goofy with it,” Prime said. “But you need to be better at playing ball, because I don’t want to be a dancer on Broadway.”

Instead of a pitch clock, there’s a game clock, as the contest promptly ends when the meter expires at two hours.

And it makes the crowd go … bananas. The Rockies can only wish they could hear so much love from so many people for them rather than the visiting team in this ballpark.

“Once BananaBall was born (in 2016), it took off like a rocket ship,” said Zack Frongillo, who at age 28 is the team’s director of entertainment.

Standing at the on-deck circle throughout the game, he drove the action from behind the keyboard of his laptop as the Captain Kirk of the Banana extravaganza.

This is probably a good time to mention Frongillo is a Colorado kid who attended his first Rockies game in LoDo as a 5-year-old.

“At first,” he admitted, “I came to the ballpark for the Dippin’ Dots.”

Rocktober made Frongillo fall in love with baseball before he mastered multiplication tables. But he developed a crush on dancing in high school. His hoofing skills allowed him to tour as a professional entertainer, before falling into a job with arena entertainment in Las Vegas, where hockey is presented like a Wayne Newton show.

“Then I discovered there’s a place on this earth that celebrates everything I’ve done with my life,” Frongillo said. “And that place is the Savannah Bananas.”

The Nanners play by their own rules. And they definitely aren’t competing against the New York Yankees.

But for those of you keeping score at home: With Rockies legend Ubaldo Jimenez making a relief appearance and Vinny Castilla grounding out as a pinch-hitter, Savannah defeated a team called the Firefighters 5-3 in an atmosphere more charged than an energy drink.

Call Banana Ball a fad, if you want.

Firefighters first baseman Logan Lacey, who played collegiately at Florida State, insists the ambition is far greater.

“We’re going,” Lacey said, “to take over the world.”

Here’s the Bananas’ business strategy: The rivals of this baseball circus for the money and attention of fans are Cirque Du Soleil, Minecraft and Paul McCartney.

For at least for these 15 minutes during our journey through the solar system, the Bananas are bigger than the Beatles.

Barnstorming nationwide, they’ve sold out 80 dates in 2025.

“I’m the real Prime Time,” joked Savannah’s first baseman, knowing full well that Deion Sanders works up the road in Boulder.

He was finally getting an at-bat in Coors Field, more than a decade after being drafted by the Rockies.

Colorado took a gamble on Prime in the 12th round of the 2016 draft, a whopping 374 selections after Colorado native Kevin Gausman went No. 4 to Baltimore.

“The major leagues have been around for more than 100 years,” he said, “and you can’t fill an NBA arena with the number of players that have made it to the big leagues.”

Prime’s long and winding road to the Show took him from Grand Junction to Perth, Australia, with a taste of Western Slope peaches to a Vegemite sandwich along the way.

“It’s a rite of passage,” Prime said. “And it’s disgusting.”

The Vegemite, not the peaches.

Prime embraced the grind of more than 2,000 at-bats in professional baseball, batting .264 with 56 homers. But not one of those dingers were blasted in a major league park.

After a long, winding road full of so many potholes it could’ve broken him, a 31-year-old baseball lifer finally enjoyed his prime time moment on a beautiful August night, hearing the cheers of 50,000 in the ballpark of the major league team that drafted him.

Welcome to the Show, dude.

Congrats. Dance like nobody’s watching.

Go Bananas.