The Savannah Bananas and Owner Jesse Cole Never Cease to Amaze Me
There are some people you meet and every time you are in their presence you learn something new. I was in Grayson Stadium in Savannah (GA) on Monday night for two reasons. The first was to watch a baseball game between the home team, the Savannah Bananas, and the visiting Florence (KY) Y’alls.
The second reason was to celebrate the release of a book by Bananas Owner Jesse Cole that I had the good fortune to help him write. The book is titled Banana Ball: The Unbelievably True Story of the Savannah Bananas.
Jesse decided to do something special for those fans who came to the pre-game book signing and gave them a tour of the facility, all the while telling them story after story. He wanted to make sure those who were experiencing Banana Ball for the first time understood that what they were going to see had never been tried before.
As I followed along on the tour and listened, I realized he was sharing things that were completely new to me. To me. The guy who had spent countless hours poring through Jesse’s life as perhaps the greatest showman since P.T. Barnum and Walt Disney. When you write a book with someone, you learn everything about them. Or so you think.
In Jesse’s case, I learned how he grew up with baseball as the core of a bond he shared with his father who raised him. How he bought the Savannah team and turned it into his personal laboratory for bringing joy and community to people by setting out to “learn what people hated about baseball and not give them that.” Did fans hate long, boring games and shelling out tons of cash on food, parking and so on? Cap the game at two hours, then fix the ticket price to include hot dogs, hamburgers, soft drinks…and parking! While you’re at it, introduce dancing umpires, players stealing first base and beginning every game by anointing a Banana Baby picked from the crowd.
Did it work?
Today, couples who are Banana fans alert the team as soon as they know they’re pregnant with the hope of having their newborn ready to be offered up as a Banana Baby in time for the upcoming season.
What kind of brain comes up with such things and compels such loyalty? Well, I can attest firsthand that it is a brain restlessly in search of ways to make things better, a brain utterly undeterred by the roadblocks that deter most of us.
“Everything is an experiment,” Jesse said to the group Monday night. “If something seems normal, we do the opposite. We try something out, and if it works, we try to improve it. And if it doesn’t work, we figure out why and try something different.”
One of Jesse’s early passions with the Bananas was to make sure people stayed until the end of the game. Actually, he doesn’t even call it a game. He calls it a show. To accomplish this, he shortened the show. He made the $25 price of ticket inclusive of everything to prevent wallet fatigue. (“We’re the only team in the world that pays your taxes,” he said. “A $25 ticket is $25. We pay seven figures-plus in taxes [for the fans]. It’s who we are and what we stand for.”) And he filled every moment between innings with unexpected surprises.
I’m humbled by Jesse’s genius but also a bit proud of how tremendously proud he is of our work together. It wasn’t always easy for the master showman to dig in and explore his past more deeply than he ever has before, discussing things about himself even he hadn’t really shared. But he dug in, and the result has been – I’m also proud to say – that Banana Ball is currently the #1 baseball book in the world and in Amazon’s top 200 in book sales worldwide. As Jesse says, “It blows my mind.”
On Monday, he told those who came to get their book hot off the press that they should stay until the end of the show and that it would be worth their time. I knew this wasn’t an idle boast because one of the great pearls of life and business wisdom Jesse sprinkled throughout our book was this: “I long ago learned that the last impression leaves a lasting impression.”
Well, Jesse is a true master of lasting impressions. In this way, he is not unlike one of his inspirations for Banana Ball and one of the muses for our book. Walt Disney used to end shows with something he called “the kiss goodnight.” Disney’s kiss was a fireworks show. Jesse has come up with his own kiss goodnight. After every game, all the fans, players, owners and staff gather outside the stadium and stand arm in arm to sing the Ben King song “Stand by Me,” a powerful reminder that we can, and should, leave that lasting impression.
