(How we became big fans of the Savannah Bananas!)
Have you ever been to a baseball game where the players run around in kilts?
How about a game where the team owner walks around in a bright yellow tuxedo?
Welcome to Banana-Land!
Banana-land is a place where baseball enthusiasts, and everyone else come together and ALL have fun. It’s a baseball experience like none other. Full stop.
They’ve done things like remove advertising from the stands, create a dance team of the Banana Nanas (grandmas!), player uniforms in kilts, and more! They’ve made their tickets all-inclusive because who likes to pay high prices for stadium food?! They even created their own version of the game called Banana Ball, which has special rules designed to speed up the game of baseball and max it out at a 2 hour time limit.
The energy is FRESH and FUN when you get around the Savannah Bananas. They’ve made baseball FUN again by focusing on the experience and community around the game. The baseball playing is actually just a small part of what they do. The real magic happens all around you and you don’t even think about it - you just experience it.
Sound familiar, Young Life family??
“We exist to make baseball fun.”
In Young Life, we call club a party with a purpose. Camp is designed to help let kids be kids again and have a ton of fun. We know there’s calculated effort into the fun we create around Young Life activities. It’s not just fun for the sake of fun. There’s depth there behind all of the fun around Young Life, but sometimes it’s the fun that gets kids’ attention.
I dare you to watch the video above. You’ll be hooked and want to watch more of the Savannah Bananas. Why? It’s contagious. People are smiling. They’re laughing. They’re having FUN.
“We’re not in the baseball business. We’re in the entertainment business. ...We’ve got nothing to lose.”
We’re not in the entertainment business. We are in the business of the gospel. Sure, we have a lot of fun and we can do camp really well, and we can do program and skits really well. On the outside it may seem like that’s all we are about. But, just like the Bananas know they aren’t really in the baseball business, we know we’re in this thing called Young Life for much deeper reasons.
“Every night is someone’s first game.”
What if we took this quote from the Banana’s leadership team to heart and applied it to Young Life? It’s true. Every night is someone’s first Young Life club. That means we show up 100 percent, go over the top, get creative, get innovative, and make it memorable.
“When you have fun, you play better.”
I think all of us in Young Life will agree. When we have fun, ministry is simply better. Sometimes we can get bogged down by the rules, the restrictions, the red tape, and we forget that when you’re having fun, it’s better. If you need some reminders of how to have fun, just watch a few of these videos about the Savannah Bananas.
I’ll admit, I’m not a fan of baseball. But, the Savannah Bananas have made me want to plan a trip to Savannah Georgia, just so I can go to a baseball game! That’s how contagious their energy is. I can’t help but wonder, as I watch more and more about this team, how we, in Young Life, can innovate too. Be inspired by a group of people who bought a bankrupt team and turned it into a sellout experience that the entire community (and arguably, the world) wants to be part of!
Written by: Valerie Morris