Light! camera! banana!
The national media spotlight is brightening for Savannah Banana, announcing that the baseball team will be featured on television and subscription streaming services.
ESPN is making fun of “Banana Land” coming to ESPN + this summer on social media platforms Twitter and Facebook. The details are sparse, but the documentary-style series features six 30-minute episodes of the sport’s unorthodox brand, “Banana Ball,” which took place in Savannah this spring, and six other southeastern episodes. We plan to tour the city and sell out the crowd.
Starting this week, HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel debuted on the premium cable network at 10 pm on Tuesday, featuring “banana balls” as a segment of new episodes streamed on HBO Max.
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“It’s annoying. It’s fun to talk,” correspondent Mary Carillo said on Monday morning from Paris, who is interviewing the French Open tennis tournament.
“I don’t think Parisians have really heard of Savannah Banana, but I’ll tell them everything about it,” she jokingly said.
More and more people are hearing about banana balls. This is a spin-off from a team of more traditional college students in the Coastal Plain League ball club. This is a rigorous summer league that begins at Grayson Stadium at the end of the month.
In either case, the circus-like atmosphere of music, dance and comedy doesn’t stop before, during, and after the game. The Savannah Banana Premier Team is a professional travel team that plays party animals in baseball versions with very different rules to speed up play and create more action and dramatic situations.
Bananas have been featured in print, television and online media nationwide, and Carillo’s attention-grabbing TikTok has 2.5 million followers.
Carilo was also impressed by generations of fans who enjoyed games and shows every night when she and HBO’s film crew visited Grayson Stadium.
“It’s not your grandfather’s baseball. It’s not your father’s baseball,” Carillo said. “I don’t think there’s much that small children and grandparents can go to in this era. It’s open to everyone, and there’s something for everyone.
“Baseball is actually pretty good. I saw some games. I had good pitching and good hits. Baseball is being played.”
David Beilinson is the producer and director of “Banana Land”. He works at RUMUR Inc., an independent production studio, with his partners Michael Galinsky and Suki Hawley.
He was assigned to check Savannah’s “crazy baseball game” last July as Banana won the 2021 Coastal Plain League title, but that wasn’t a normal success story. ..
“I have no idea what the team was,” Beilinson said in a recent interview in Savannah. “I saw a picture of this guy in a yellow suit and a lot of players dancing and said,’OK, this is funny.’ And I arrived at Grayson Stadium and saw what happened. My heart was blown away. “
Beilinson has created a 7-minute documentary film about bananas that was screened at ESPN’s Sports Center. The man in the yellow suit was Jesse Cole, the co-owner of the team that started bananas with his wife Emily in the savanna in 2016.
“It got a lot of attention online,” Beilinson said. “I think it helped a lot for bananas to expose them to a larger audience, and I liked working with Jesse (Cole). There’s a bigger story than the five-minute piece on TV. So I combined this pitch to create a longer series. “
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Beilinson and his 15-17 crew followed the team almost every day, from the late February tryout to the final tour stop in Kansas City in early May. They captured behavior in front of and behind the crowd and conducted over 100 hours of video interviews.
“In an era of social media and content proliferation, where you can see everything, I think it’s very rare in this era to discover something completely unique in the United States that no one else has ever seen.” Mr. Beilinson said. “And I think that’s what they came down to here.”
Nathan Dominitz is a sports content editor for Savannah Morning News and savannahnow.com. Email him at ndominitz@savannahnow.com. Twitter: @NathanDominitz