Gillum having a ball with unique baseball squad
Dec. 2—Banana Ball mania is running wild and Latta High School graduate Tyler Gillum is smack dab in the middle of it. In fact, he's one of the leaders of the pack.
Gillum was hired as the manager/head coach of the Savannah Bananas collegiate baseball team back in 2018 and during a five-year run led the team to back-to-back Petitt Cup championships and he was a two-time Coastal Plain League Coach of the Year.
He graduated from Latta in 2005, where he was a member of four state championship teams — including one squad that went 33-0 — before spending two years at Seminole State Junior College. He finished his playing career at East Central University
The Savannah Bananas have now evolved into simply Banana Ball and no longer compete in the PCL. Instead, they take their show on the road and play before sellout crowds all across the United States.
What exactly is Banana Ball?
"ESPN has called us The Greatest Show in Sports," Gillum told The Ada News during a stop in town last Tuesday. "Banana Ball is a great form of baseball with entertainment. We throw our own twist on baseball."
Gillum was in town earlier this week and delivered a motivational speech to a group of Ada High School athletes.
Banana Ball players are known to dance and dance some more during a game, they sometimes play in kilts, have legendary walk-ups, have unique scoring celebrations and may even feature the World's Tallest Hitter and Pitcher — Dakota "Stilts" Albritton. Their owner, Jesse Cole, can always be found wearing a yellow tuxedo. They have their own senior citizen dance team, the Banana Nanas and have a dancing umpire who may twerk it out on strikeout calls.
Their games are fast-paced and entertaining from the first pitch to the last. and fans go bananas for them wherever they may be.
While wildly entertaining, Banana Ball also includes real, high-quality baseball.
Gillum said he remembers the meeting about five years ago that really turned the Savannah Bananas into Banana Ball like it was yesterday.
"We wanted to figure out how can we play games in the offseason, outside of the summer, and we can make it the most entertaining baseball has ever been," he explained. "We had this vision to be the greatest show in sports, but we also wanted to be really good on the field. It was our twist on baseball to keep it fast and keep it exciting and keep fans locked in the entire game. We've continued to grow it ever since."
A lot of times in the past, folks would leave in the late innings of a ballgame. Now, most fans get there early and stay after the game is over.
"We greet our fans and we de-greet our fans. We welcome them to the games and thank them for coming. We sign autographs. I feel like when people come and experience it, they see really good baseball but they are also entertained for nine innings."
The Savannah Bananas were a hot ticket before Gillum even arrived in Georgia.
"We've sold out every game in Savannah since 2016. Nobody's ever bought a ticket at the Will Call window. It's crazy. We've had this demand for a long time," he explained.
Part of the decision to stop playing as a collegiate team during the summer was that fans were confusing those games with the much more entertaining Banana Ball.
"In April of 2022, we went from half a million followers on Twitter (now X) to three million in just over a month. The demand for Banana Ball became so big it was just time to go all in," Gillum recalled. "We also didn't want to confuse our fans. In the summer of 2022, we were playing real baseball in our summer collegiate league and fans were showing up and expecting Banana Ball. We sold out every game on the road because people thought we were bringing in the show. But it was just summer ball. We had to explain that it was baseball, not Banana Ball. We were confusing fans."
Last year was the first Banana Ball World Tour and to say it was a hit would be an understatement.
"We played 87 games in 33 cities in 20 states and we sold out every single game. We had over seven million people watch games on YouTube. Last year we had a half million fans watch us live and this year we're going to double that," Gillum said.
In 2024, a million fans from all over the United States will get to watch live Banana Ball action. However, there are over two million fans already on the Banana Ball ticket waiting list.
Banana Ball will visit six Major League Baseball stadiums in 2024 and a host of Minor League venues. The first MLB stop will be March 9 at Minute Maid Park in Houston.
Gillum, a Boston Red Sox fan, has June 8 circled on his calendar. That's when he and the Bananas will visit the legendary Fenway Park in Boston.
"I've had a ton of my buddies ask me if we really think we'll be able to sell out Fenway (Park). I told them it holds 32,000 and 48 hours after we announced that we were going to Fenway, we had 57,000 people on the wait list. We could probably sell it out twice if we wanted to," he said.
Of course, at the top of Gillum's list, is a return trip to the Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City on May 16-18.
"We're coming back to Oklahoma City and I consider that my "home town" on the tour. It was awesome last year. I'm excited to come back," he said.
Gillum was able to see a host of his Sooner State friends last summer but at the top of that list was former Latta Hall of Fame coach Eddie Collins.
"I think I cried about 15 times last year when I was there. Coach Collins was at one of the games and he is my hero. To have him there and to see all of that was pretty surreal, to be honest with you," he said.
Even a hard-nosed, baseball purist like Collins enjoyed the show.
"It was amazing. He just told me he was proud of me and thought what we were doing was pretty cool," Gillum said.
"Some of these guys that are true, traditional baseball guys — and I'm a traditional baseball guy too — are skeptical until they come to a game. What we're doing is a little bit different ... but they see it's really good baseball. It's not scripted on the baseball side. It's competitive and we want to keep it that way," he continued. "But we're going to throw some entertainment in there too. We're going to celebrate. We're going to have fun. We're going to do some dances. But it's also going to be really good baseball."
Even though Gillum has been thrown into a national spotlight since the evolution of Banana Ball — and that spotlight will only shine brighter in the coming months and years — he says he's still an old Latta Panther at heart. and he can't wait to bring his show back to OKC.
"I still feel like a small-town kid from Ada, Oklahoma. I haven't changed any at all," he said. "I still wear 66 on the back of my jersey because I represent Gillum 66 Ranch (his grandparent's ranch in Galey) where I grew up. Coming back to Oklahoma was special. I think we had half the town of Ada there on those two nights. It was good to see some of those guys I grew up playing baseball with. It was fun."
------o------
Banana Ball
2024 tour schedule
Feb. 8-10: Tampa Bay, Florida; George M. Steinbrenner Field
Feb. 15-17: Peoria, Arizona; Peoria Sports Complex
March 1-3: Jacksonville, Florida; 121 Financial Ballpark
March 9: Houston, Texas; Minute Maid Park
March 14-16: Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Alex Box Stadium
March 22-24: Gwinnett County, Georgia; Coolray Field
April 12-14: Durham, North Carolina; Durham Bulls Athletic Park
April 20-21: Albuquerque, New Mexico; Rio Grande Credit Union Field at Isotopes Park
April 25-27: Mesa, Arizona; Sloan Park
May 3-5: Fresno, California; Chukchansi Park
May 9-11: Sacramento, California; Sutter Health Park
May 16-18: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark
May 24-26: Columbus, Ohio; Huntington Park
June 8: Boston, Massachusetts; Fenway Park
June 13-15: Nashville, Tennessee; First Horizon Park
June 27-29: Indianapolis, Indiana; Victory Field
July 5-7: Buffalo, New York; Sahlen Field
July 13: Washington, D.C.; Nationals Park
Aug. 1-3: Louisville, Kentucky; Louisville Slugger Field
Aug. 10: Cleveland, Ohio; Progressive Field
Aug. 16-18: Norfolk, Virginia; Harbor Park Stadium
Aug. 30-31: Salt Lake City, Utah; Smith's Ballpark
Sept. 6-8: Des Moines, Iowa; Principal Park
Sept. 21: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Citizens Bank Park
Oct. 12: Miami, Florida; LoanDepot Park
Oct. 14-18: Bananaland at Sea
